LOS ANGELES — They gave DJ Rodman an ovation at Galen when he was subbed in the fourth quarter on Saturday night, and Rodman beamed from ear to ear, a feature hardly uncharacteristic for a happy-go-lucky dude with painted nails and a heart on his sleeve.
“For me, sadness is a waste of time,” Rodman said in the fall, after one practice.
The smile this night, though, was special, because this ovation was thoroughly deserved. For a month — okay, months — USC had struggled with rebounding, often simply outworked on the glass, the deficiencies never more glaring than in losses to UCLA and Oregon that dropped them to the bottom of the Pac-12. Coach Andy Enfield had grown long frustrated with the effort, characterizing his bigs as “poor” defensive rebounders on Thursday night in a clear wake-up call to his roster, searching for some semblance of toughness.
The solution to USC’s big-man rebounding issues, evidently, was not a big man at all.
For 22 minutes on Saturday night in an 82-54 win over Oregon State, Rodman played about five inches bigger than his 6-foot-6 frame, beating the backboard into submission in one of the more impressive individual performances of a formerly wilting USC season. His 12 points weren’t particularly loud, a collection of a few layups and free throws; his 14 rebounds were deafening, in the middle of most every offensive and defensive possession for USC, clawing and tipping and palming balls off the glass in a sheer display of the toughness Enfield was searching for.
It wasn’t as if Rodman, too, was simply collecting loose balls; he had nine defensive rebounds on a night no other Trojan had more than four, scrapping for five offensive rebounds to extend possessions. With a few minutes left in the fourth quarter, he’d quite nearly outrebounded Oregon State by himself.
There are flashes of his father Dennis everywhere you look, when you see Rodman; the tattoos, the nails, the sheer expressiveness. Flashes never more…
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