NBA: The best rebounder of all time from every NBA team

Best rebounder in Brooklyn Nets history: Buck Williams

The Brooklyn Nets are not a great franchise. There’s no other way to really describe them, especially when you look at their NBA history.

How awful are they? Well, when they joined the NBA as part of the NBA/ABA merger, they immediately gave their best and most marketable player — Julius Erving — to the Philadelphia 76ers in order to help cover a $4.8 million “territory fee” to the New York Knicks.

The Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs swiftly brushing them away in consecutive NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003 serve as the team’s lone highlights since the merger. They have spent the last few seasons handing out lottery picks to the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Since moving to Brooklyn in 2012, they have never ranked higher than 16th in attendance.

With that said, it makes sense that this team would have such an unspectacular player at the top of their rebounding leaderboards: Buck Williams. As of this season, Williams holds the franchise records for total rebounds (7,576), offensive rebounds (2,588), defensive rebounds (4,988) and rebounds per game (11.9).

Drafted third overall by the then-New Jersey Nets in the 1981 NBA Draft, Williams was a double-double machine from the moment he stepped on the floor for the team. He averaged at least 10 points and rebounds in each of his first seven seasons with the team.

The Nets made the playoffs in five of those seasons — which qualifies as their second-longest run of success since moving to the NBA — but they only went as far as the second round.

Williams was a solid, but unspectacular player, which makes it fitting that he leads the Nets in several categories, including rebounding.