LeBron has traditionally been asked to do a lot for his teams.
Primary scorer.
Primary ball handler.
In some cases, he needed to be the best or second best rebounder as well.
However, imagine a scenario where LeBron is on a team with a couple of A+ ball handers and scorers, and the team needed somebody to play in the post and grab rebounds.
Assuming that LeBron doesn’t have to handle the ball much and that he is a 3rd or 4th scoring option, would he be able to lead the league in rebounding were that the primary purpose of his contribution on the floor?
I ask because he is one of few players to lead the league in scoring one year and assists in another and this would indeed would give him a unique distinction.
If he just focused on ONLY that, like Rodman? Of course
No. Maybe if he like threw the game to grab more rebounds, but not practically.
He could…
Sure, he potentially could if he was prioritizing rebounds above anything else.
So here’s a poorly understood truth about Dennis Rodman.
If you play proper offense or defense, you won’t lead the league in rebounds unless you’re north of six eleven and very mobile. But if you follow every shot on both ends of the court, trailing it to the rim a bit and trying to guess where it’ll land based on the trajectory of the shot and basic physics of the variety pool players master, you can add several rebounds to your average per game, but your point scoring and assists will go down quite a bit, your overall usefulness to the offense will be considerably less, and you’re only really helping the defense if you don’t mind getting bludgeoned with bruises and scrapes on a nightly basis, because the technique involves a great deal of fighting through traffic.
Rodman could single handedly alter the outcome of many games when he was on the Spurs and Bulls because he frankly wasn’t needed much on offense, and he’s such a nutter that he didn’t mind getting the literal shit beat out of him on defense.
So, if Bron was playing with say Steph Curry and Paul George, plus several good shooters and a decent second big… And if he was willing to get physically beaten, yes, he could on fact win a rebounding title. Probably even this year, if he wanted.
That said, he doesn’t play with two offensive threats at the level of MJ and Scottie, he doesn’t have shooter around him of the caliber of Kerr, and his team couldn’t afford for him to average about 10 ppg.
It wouldn’t change his legacy at all to win a rebound title, unless that team won the championship. Otherwise people would see it for what it is: a gimmick.
Of course. Any decent player could dominate a single stat if they wanted to.
I want Trae Young to focus on winning the rebounding title this season. I know he can if he wanted to.