Kingster
Hall of Famer
Hawes not rebounding well in college is more indicative of him only being in college for one year, than it is indicative of his future career in rebounding. He was 19 when we drafted him?
The killer instinct should come from our PF IMO, or whomever we pair with Hawes.
He can't get physical until he gains more weight.
The fact that he is obviously underweight, and still manages to put up decent numbers when he gets starter type minutes in his rookie campaign and even with all of the other rebounding problems is surprising to me. As a starting Center this year: 7.6 rebs in 33.1 min/game. That equates to a 9.2 rebs/40 min. So all of these people who think that he will average 8 rebs in 2 or 3 years need to wake up. He has the potential to do it next year, and I think he will if he gets starter-type minutes.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/splits?playerId=3211
As a big proponent of Hawes, I've been estimating 8 rebs a game, which I don't think is bad. The reason I'm conservative and don't interpret the numbers like you do at 9 rebs/game is that I don't think players put out as much energy/minute if they play 40 minutes/game for 82 games than if they are coming off the bench. Therefore, I'm not sure, he'll get up to an average of 9 rebs/game for an 82 game season. If he does, great, he'll be even better than I thought.