I just can’t believe that we drafted one of the most freak athletes in CBB history.

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round mound of 6 Rebounds (per game)

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Weird thing tk say on a night he 12 rebounds…

In a season he’s averaging 8.5 rebounds…

In fact he has only had one game less than 8 rebounds in the 4..

Some of y'all need to frick off.

Want to talk about his struggles handling the ball right now? Fine

Want to talk about his shooting performance? Fine

Don’t sit here and try to criticize his rebounding when he has shown FAR greater effort on the glass and on the court this season. He’s struggling on offense and handling the ball, two areas we should have no worries he will get under control as he always has.

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First off, I was using his career average to make a joke. But yeah, he’s rebounded better through 4 games, so that negates the joke I guess?

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You have to look at who he’s played with. Steven Adams and Jonas covering the 5 spot for his career gave us two very high rebounding bigs that sucked up a volume of the rebounds, now Zion is being counted on to rebound more since we don’t have that big man, and he’s done a pretty damn good job of it so far this season.

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I’m complaining about his lack of effort to just do the basic stuff to make himself the athlete he should’ve been here all. It’s insane that he went from such a freak athlete (his best draft trait) to us needing to wait until he’s in “basketball shape” every season. I don’t care that he’s finally giving some effort to grab rebounds.

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Every single player has to play themselves into “basketball shape”. There’s a reason you see a higher level of play as the season goes along.

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I get what you’re saying, but what I’m saying is that what made me excited about Zion was his high flying, athletic and dominant style of play. Not whatever this player he’s developed into where it’s just a drive, spin, and awkward layup that falls.

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That high flying athletic style of play is what leads to players careers being cut VERY short due to injury like Rose, or leads to chronic knee issues like Lavine. The team deliberately started having Zion perform more layups around the basket rather than dunking everything to help keep the force off his legs/knees.

Good thing Zion being careful and shooting layups has lead to such good health and deep playoff runs for he and the team the past 6 years.

Zion's closest comp is Charles Barkley, who came into the league at 300-pounds. Barkley played most of his career around 250-pounds. He was an excellent rebounder despite playing next to Moses Malone for years, who was one of the great rebounders in NBA history. And Charles had a very long, productive career despite being a high-flying big guy. So has LeBron. Nothing is a given...