Suns Blog: Suns Win Game 5 On The Glass

If there was one major concern the Phoenix Suns had coming into their series with the Portland Trail Blazers, it was rebounding. The Suns are one of the worst teams at it - they were the second-worst defensive rebounding team in the league during the regular season - and the Blazers were one of the best at it (fourth in the league in offensive rebounding, seventh in defensive rebounding). In addition, Suns starting center Robin Lopez was not going to play in this series, making a weak Suns rebounding unit even weaker.

So it comes as a big surprise that it’s actually the Suns that are dominating the glass. They’re outrebounding the Blazers on both the offensive and defensive glass this series, and had a major advantage in last night’s victory. As SB Nation’s Suns blog Bright Side of the Sun writes:

In the Game 5 win, the Suns put up an impressive 17 fast break points, but the real dominance came on the glass. The Suns out-rebounded Portland 41 to 29 overall and 15 to 9 on the offensive glass (22-14 second chance points).

How were the undersized Suns able to get to so many loose balls? Coach Alvin Gentry explains, “When the game is open court then we can use our quickness and our athleticism to get to the ball. They’re so long and so big and Camby and those guys just suck everything up on the boards when you’re in a stagnant-type offense. We just tried to open up the floor and get them moving and now when the ball goes up there we can use our quickness to try and beat them to the ball.”

Channing Frye told Bright Side of the Sun that a lot of it has to do with tempo. The Suns know the Blazers won’t run back at them, so they’re sending more people to the offensive glass. On the other end, the Blazers, concerned about Phoenix’s fast break, has been more conservative about sending people to the glass, which has helped the Suns control their defensive backboard. As Bright Side of the Sun writes:

On the other end, this series all along as has been about the Blazers decision to either attack their offensive glass or get back in transition to stop the Suns. They can’t effectively do both.

Just as the Blazers strategy has been to take away the Suns strongest weapons (pick and roll and Amare in the paint) the Suns have used the Blazers inherent identity as a team against them and taken advantage of their defensive decisions.

So far, the Suns are winning the chess match.

We’ll see how it plays out in Game 6, but the fact that Phoenix has neutralized Portland’s biggest strength is a major reason they’ve taken control of this series.