The Pelicans have the bigs but they don’t have the rebounding advantage

Two seven foot stars make the advantage self-explanatory.

Other teams are trotting out smaller lineups to adhere to the defensive switching and versatility needed to survive in the current NBA while the New Orleans Pelicans mold their roster like Dr. Henry Wu, from the genes of prehistoric entities.

Two players on the same team rarely average 20 points and 10 rebounds and it hasn’t happened since the San Antonio Spurs did so in 1998. Almost 20 years later the New Orleans Pelicans are hoping to become the first team to do so since David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins are well on their way to accomplishing that. Both averaging over 25 points per game and 11 rebounds per game.

Despite this, however, the Pelicans are still not a very assertive rebounding team. They rank just 11th in defensive rebounding percentage and a ghastly 22nd in offensive rebound percentage. They have also failed to grab more rebounds than their opponent in six of their 15 games this season.

One would assume the one major strength of having two large stars make up the frontcourt would be superior rebounding and yet the Pelicans have not showcased that ability to simply outrebound their way to win.

This may not seem like an alarming fact but with the spotty shooting and players on this team, rebounding will be a huge factor in deciding whether or not this team is playoff bound.

One thing that may be contributing to this lackluster rebounding is the frequency of which the Pelicans play small. Essentially every moment that AD and Boogie are not on the court together, they are with a small ball power forward.

Darius Miller was the most frequent participant in this role. This led to lineups that grabbed much fewer rebounds than the ones with the two domineering bigs.

Then, Darius Miller started hitting more threes and the Pelicans felt comfortable playing him at the three. This opened up Cheick Diallo to spend more time at power forward.

This has the potential to give the Pelicans superior rebounding for 48 minutes. It just hasn’t yet. In fact, in the nearly 30 minutes of play with either Cousins and Davis, those lineups have just around a 50% rebounding percentage.

This is something you wouldn’t expect from a lineup featuring two bigs, however, these lineups are also terrible offensive and defensively.

Both lineups configurations have an offensive rating below 100 and a defensive rating above 110.

The Pelicans quest to rebounding superiority is questionable. Diallo will need to be the guy who steps up and starts snatching more rebounds.

The Pelicans attempted to buld on a strength, assuming they’d rebound with the best of them.

Instead, they aren’t a middling rebounding team simply striving to compete with the best of them.

Cheick Diallo is the man to manifest their perceived dominant rebounding destiny into reality.

Next: Explaining the New Orleans Pelicans Small Sample Phenomena

It’s just unclear whether or not he can.