Yeah, yeah. Old news.
That has nothing to do with what really has been happening on the floor.
Every coach ends up doing the same things with Green. They play Green as an outside-in scorer, taking 3PT shots to space the defense and only coming in on slashes of his own. On the other end of the floor they play him primarily as a perimeter defender, usually assigned to try to isolate a wing. These usages of Green play to his strengths. This makes sense to use him this way. So this is how he gets used
He's not the only SF who gets used this way. Lots of them do. I could identify probably around 30 such players in the league getting rotation minutes. And among those sorts of players, Green's rebound numbers are pretty average.
So, Danny is wrong when he identifies it as a weakness?
Also, does Green's role differ that much from Paul Pierce's? The Captain played mostly outside, as well. Yet, his TRB% last year was much better than Green's this season; he pulled in 45% more of the rebounds available to him. The difference was even more pronounced on the defensive boards, where Pierce got 19.7% of all rebounds, compared to 13.7% for Green this year.
Seriously? You don't see how vastly different Green and Pierce have been and are used?
Pierce has never been as good a perimeter man defender as Green, but is much stronger at holding the post. On P&R , Green is often tasked with taking the ball handler, whereas Pierce would normally take the roller. On offense, the differences are a longer list. Green gets barely 1.7 close touches (recieved passes within 12 feet) per game. Pierce probably got at least twice that. Pierce routinely posted up players from the elbow inward. Green posts up once every blue moon.
ORB%, TRB% and DRB% are fine stats for measuring impact on team rebounding, but they don't really measure how well an individual player rebounds the chances that he actually has at a ball. If Avery Bradley shoots from outside the arc and the carom goes to the other side and is grabbed by someone 20 feet away, that counts against his ORB% and TRB% - even though he never had a chance at grabbing that rebound.
NBA.com's Player Tracking tracks the number of times a player is within 3.5 feet of a rebound as a 'rebounding chance'. This provides some illuminating information about the impact of a player's role and floor responsibilities on their rebounding numbers.
Jared Sullinger is, I think we would all agree, a great rebounder. Well, given his role on the team, he was within 3.5 feet of a rebound on average 13.3 times per game. He grabbed 60.9% of them to reach his per-game average of 8.1.
Jeff Green, playing a different role, was only within 3.5 feet of a rebound 7.8 times per game. He grabbed 59.3% of them to reach his per-game average of 4.6.
So, within their actual opportunities, both players grabbed 60%.
If we are going to get down on Green for his low rebounding numbers, the real thing we are questioning is where he should be on the floor. So it becomes a trade off question. Is Green more valuable to you if he posts-up more or crashes the boards or plays defense in the paint than he is as a floor-spacing shooter and slasher and get-back-quick-on-transition D perimeter player?
It's a fair question, but so far his coaches have consistently used him in the latter fashion.
Let's return to the comparison between Sullinger and Green from up above. Both grabbed about 60% of the rebound chances they got. But a larger portion of Sullinger's chances were contested: Some 46% compared to just 24.2% for Green. There is no guarantee that if they switched places that Green wrestles some of those away inside and thus maybe he wouldn't maintain that 60% rate of grabbing his chances if he's down low where Sully plays. On the flip side, maybe Sully is too slow to chase down some of the wide bouncing outside rebounds were Green usually plays. So maybe his percentage drops too.
Players need to be deployed to best take advantage of their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. It is up to the coach make sure that happens.