Flip Murray Plays in his First Game of the Season as 'Cats Blow out the Hawks.
I say "outlier" because there's no way in hell Raja Bell goes 9 for 12 on any regular basis -- especially with his injured left wrist. Gerald Wallace, similarly, is playing way above his head by averaging 14.8 rebounds per game through these first five games. That is not to say that I would be shocked to see Gerald Wallace increasing his rebounding rate this year. There's a few reasons for why I could see a trend in him increasing his rebounding rate:
1. Gerald Wallace is playing significantly more minutes.
He's been averaging 41.6 minutes per game (though, one of those games was an overtime game) so far through these first five games. That's a huge contrast to his career average of 28 minutes per game. However, last year, Wallace averaged 7.8 rebounds per game on 37.6 minutes per game -- simplified to 1 rebound every 4.8 minutes in 2008-2009 versus 1 rebound every 2.81 minutes in 2009-2010 (through 5 games). That means he's rebounding 1.71 times as effectively this year. A 10% increase in minutes should not increase production by nearly 100%. Those are true fantasy numbers that should fall whenever Wallace decides to return to this visible plane of existence where mere mortals reside. Demigod status is only fleeting.
2. The Bobcats are shooting poorly through these first five games at a mere 38.4% -- increasing offensive rebounding opportunities for Wallace.
The Bobcats are averaging 13.4 offensive rebounds per game so far this season. That's an average increase of 2.6 offensive rebounds per game since last year -- where 10.8 a game was the mean. A lot of that has to do with the Bobcats shooting much more poorly since last year's 45.5% per game. That difference in 7.1% since last year creates more rebounding opportunities for Wallace. Wallace, himself, has doubled his offensive rebounding output since last year -- 1.6 offensive boards per game versus 3.2 offensive rebounds per game.
3. The Bobcats are playing better defense this year under Larry Brown and, as a result, are forcing their opponents into worse shots.
The improved defense has led to a drop in opponent field goal percentage from last year to this year -- 45.4% (2008-2009) to 42.7% (2009-2010). If their opponents continue to shoot poorly, and the front court outside of Wallace continues to play like grade-school children, expect Wallace's defensive rebounding numbers to continue being absurd.
However, regardless of this enormous 5-game sample Gerald Wallace has displayed, rebounding rate generally doesn't vary that much year to year. Most players remain consistently bad or good at rebounding. Somethingawful.com forums poster mphill summarizes this phenomenon pretty well:
Rebound rate typically doesn't improve that much, even for a rookie. Look at Dwight, who entered the league as a twig of a 19 year old and bulked up very quickly. His TRB% went up 3% his second season. Okafor's went down .2%. Shaq's went down 2% and stayed very near that mark for his entire 20 year career.
Boxscore gems and other notes:
Flip Murray made his debut tonight and pretty much did what everyone expected of him -- shoot a bunch of 3s and watch as DJ Augustin gets blocked on nearly half of his shots because Augustin's fucking short (4 Blocks Against tonight).
And finally, I'll end tonight's post with a Cartier Martin zen moment:
Sittin at home watching "House". Who watches this stuff?
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