The Sacramento Kings are surprisingly bad at a lot of different things, such as offense and defense. One stat the Kings remain criminally terrible in is rebounding, specifically their rebounding percentage. In this dire case, the Kings are dead last and absolutely have to do better. Period.
There are a lot of components to a successful NBA team. It takes incredible effort across the board from every player on the court to build a crew that is efficient and effective on offense but also provides lockdown defense. At the core of all of that is rebounding.
If you're reading this, it's probably safe to assume that you know what a rebound is. On the off chance you don't, it's when a player collects the ball after a missed shot. Sound simple? It's not. Everyone under the rim is fighting for that ball in those situations because of how important it is.
An offensive rebound means that the possession continues, and your team gets another chance to score. A defensive rebound means that you have stopped the other team from scoring, and you're on offense now. As such, being as bad as the Kings in this area is a really, really big problem.
Sacramento needs to start cleaning the glass more
For the last three seasons, the Kings' All-Star center, Domantas Sabonis, has been the reigning rebound leader in the league. Thanks to a long-term injury and an overall less productive season, he's no longer in the top 50. Nikola Jokic is currently the number one rebounder.
Even with Sabonis, the Kings were not doing well in rebounds as a team. Their rebound percentage, which gauges the overall effectiveness of collecting rebounds after missed shots, is at 46.8 percent. That's last in the league. Their average number of rebounds per game isn't much better.
The Kings are currently collecting an average of 40.8 rebounds per game this season, which puts them in 28th. Those numbers are actually up a bit from where they were, due in part to the exceptional rebounding of rookie center Maxime Raynaud over the past few games.
Even if Sabonis returns to his rebound-collecting ways when he gets back, that's not going to fix the problem. Literally everyone on the team needs to do a better job of corralling missed shots, which will help reignite the offense as well as lay the groundwork for an actual defensive presence.