Blake Griffin is a great athlete. KG is a prety good athlete as well.
Luol Deng is a very good athlete. Paula Pierce is also a decent athlete.
Carlos Boozer is a good athlete. Brandon Bass has some pretty good hops when he's doing one of his power dunks. And he also looks pretty ripped as well.
I think there are some really great athletes in the NBA. I also think that outside of a couple of uber elite athletes - LeBron, Durant, Howard and Griffin come to mind - it's not like all these other players on the other teams every night are NBA level athletes and KG, Bass, Pierce, etc...are high school level athletes. I don't buy the "athletic separation" as an excuse for our rebounding woes. I don't see that big of a Delta.
What I do see very often indeed is a shot going up by the other team and our team collectively turning around and looking at the rim while opposing players from the other team walk by us or shove us out of the way and get a rebound.
I see, very often, no attempt by our guys in the lane to find a guy, stick there back side into them, throw their elbows out and box out a guy.
I'm not sayig the great athletes won't occasionally fly over you or move around you. But 75-85 % of the time, if you're laying a body on your guy, your greatly increasing your chances of securing the board.
I guarantee you that a Larry Bird in his prime would absolutely destroy Blake Griffin on the boards if he had to check him. And the main reason that would happen would be because Bird would get into a mental and physical fist fight with Griffin, figuratively speaking. He'd refuse to let Griffin get to the ball - he'd constantly put his body between the ball and Griffin and he'd "want" the ball more than Griffin.
I'm not saying that boxing out will eliminate all better athletes from getting the ball - but I bet it would move us up about 10 spots in the rebounding column - and that would be enough to make all the difference in a lot of games we're giving away.