There has staggeringly been only one U.S. representative among the league’s top 10 rebounders for each of the past three seasons.

That is from Marc Stein.  How did that happen?  Where is the current-day Charles Oakley?  Moses Malone, our nation turns it lonely eyes to you!  Dennis Rodman would do as well. Yet here is the list of the top rebounders from last year in the NBA, and yes Rudy Gobert is French.

Of course, you all know that in the key FIBA games the U.S. squad was badly rebounded by a number of nations, including the tiny Lithuania (their population is tiny, not their size per person).  And Bam Adebayo was tired from the Finals and was not available.

Why has the balance of Rebounding power turned so seriously against U.S. basketball players?  Is it that all the tall ones are nowadays being hired by Goldman Sachs or Open AI?  Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me.

One hypothesis is that today the game demands a broader set of skills, and more teamwork, than in earlier times.  Charles Oakley still would make the NBA today, but perhaps as an 11th man, rather than as a regular player who could hone his skills and become a leading figure.  In other words, the return to training Big Men has (maybe) gone up a lot.  Simply being big and strong yields a smaller return than before, because on offense they are counting on you to hit that open three-point shot.  On defense, they are counting on you to rotate on perimeter defense in a manner that Oakley did not have to worry about so much.  And so on.

And maybe the European and other teams do a better job training their big men at younger ages.  The European big guys do in fact have excellent long-distance shooting and often higher quality passing skills.  The U.S. players (mostly) leaving college after their first year does not help with this.

And thus, in that equilibrium, the better shooting makes the teams as a whole, better rebounders as well.  That is a modestly counterintuitive conclusion.

Or is there some other, better model for why U.S. rebounding prowess has declined in recent years?

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