last night, in mile high Denver, he played 31 minutes. He looked a little gassed at times, but even at minute 31 he was still dominating the glass.
He had a 33% rebound rate. For reference, Zubac's 22% rebound rate leads the NBA among qualified players (games & minutes), although Clingan's 22.7% rate is better, he just doesn't have the minutes
more than that though, is that Clingan grabbed 10 offensive rebounds for an offensive rebound rate of 30.4%. Kessler leads NBA among qualified players with an off reb rate of 16.4%. Again, Clingan is better at 18.5%; but yeah, not enough minutes. A player in terrible shape is not going to grab 10 offensive rebounds and post that rate of 30.4%. (Clingan had 10 off rebounds; Denver, as a team had 12) He may not be in optimal shape, but he's in good enough shape to generate the required effort to dominate the offensive glass. He's not in as bad of shape as some are claiming in this thread
here's the thing though, and speaking of Clingan's limited minutes: the best way to get in game shape is to get consistent minutes on a consistent rotation in actual games. Clingan has a coach that has not only throttled down Clingan's minutes way below what they should be, he has given Clingan wildly inconsistent minutes and has not brought him in the game at consistent times.
look at Clingan's minutes over the last 10 games:
17:37
20:20
10:37
7:44
11:06
9:34
16:53
5:52
21:09
31:00
that for a 20 year old rookie big man. I think if he was consistently averaging 25-30 minutes he might get into optimal shape. He's not going to with those kinds of minutes. The gap between his high and low in those 10 games is 25 minutes, which is about what he should have been averaging most of the season.
I think the notion that Clingan is in terrible shape is bogus; an exaggeration. But if you're somebody who thinks Clingan should be in much better shape, then you should determine the difference between what kind of shape you think he should be in vs the shape he's actually in and blame that difference on Chauncey, not Clingan