Brooklyn Nets: Explaining team’s poor defensive rebounding

The Brooklyn Nets have had an up-and-down season thus far. Statistically, defensive rebounding has been a major area of concern.

Despite only being the 7-seed in the Eastern Conference last season, the Brooklyn Nets entered 2020-21 as one of the favorites to win the NBA championship. Having returning players like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant that played 20 and 0 games respectively last season explains a lot of this.

Despite the high expectations, things haven’t gone entirely smoothly thus far. Not only is the team below .500, but Durant is expected to miss the next four games due to a mandated 7-day quarantine (was exposed to someone with CV-19).

Spencer Dinwiddie is already out for the season after suffering a torn ACL, and Caris LeVert — someone the Nets need to play near an All-Star level to reach their potential — is only shooting 37.3 percent from the field (27.3 percent on threes) thus far. All of this has happened as rumors continue to swirl about a potential trade for James Harden.

While the sample size is too small to draw any grand conclusions, one statistical metric jumps out so far as a concern: defensive rebounding percentage — the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs. Brooklyn currently ranks dead last in defensive rebounding, securing only 67.4 percent of potential rebounds.

For reference, the Sacramento Kings rank first in defensive rebounding at 77.8 percent. Last season, the Charlotte Hornets finished 30th at 70.6 percent, so the Nets’ 67.4 percent is definitely quite poor (the mighty Milwaukee Bucks were first at 77.5). Can anything explain the team’s poor defensive rebounding thus far?