Brooklyn Nets forward Royce O’Neale has had to adapt to a lot of different roles depending on the situation ever since the NBA trade deadline essentially relegated him to the bench. Most of the time, O’Neale has to fill in as a pseudo-big whenever Nic Claxton gets into foul trouble or when head coach Jacque Vaughn decides to play small.
In Friday’s 124-123 overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, O’Neale had 12 points and 15 rebounds as he had to help Claxton deal with the likes of Rudy Gobert in the paint. Even with Claxton on the floor, the Nets still lack a big who has the size of a player like Gobert so anytime the team faces someone like him, it is a tough task.
That is why it’s important for Brooklyn to rebound as a unit to make up for the lack of size. The Nets did that after the first quarter as three different player had more than right rebounds and O’Neale did the most on the inside to help out Claxton. O’Neale also brought some value to the table by still being a threat from three-point land and he was able to push the ball in transition whenever Brooklyn had a numbers advantage. O’Neale reacted to the team rebounding together as a collective unit:
“You know, everybody’s being collective rebounding, coming together. I mean, playing small ball, we know, it’s gonna take all of us and we were lucky that was good enough to get all those rebounds.”
