Basketball / Casspi reveals his rebound

If your team wins two successive games when your best player is injured, you can allow yourself to joke. "[Omri Casspi]'s been hiding that skill from us," joked coach Sacramento Kings coach Paul Westphal after his charges took 53 rebounds during the 120-107 over Golden State on Sunday. "I think he got more rebounds in this game than he's got all season."

Casspi finished the game with a double-double: 12 points and 10 rebounds, plus five assists and three steals during 36 minutes on the parquet, as the Kings registered their first back-to-back victories of the season. "He's rebounding like [the center, Jon] Brockman, shooting free throws like Brockman," the coach added.

"I didn't know how to get those rebounds," Casspi said. "I didn't know where to find the ball. In Europe, I did it very well. It's a different game [in the NBA]. The ball bounces different, and there's a lot bigger guys. I just need to find a way to get those rebounds."

While Utah is a team in crisis and Golden State is hardly a major NBA powerhouse, Sacramento (3-2) has looked like a better team without its star player, Kevin Martin, and Casspi put his finger on the reason. "[Slovenian forward] Beno Udrih does some incredible things with the ball, and everyone feels they're part of the game," he told the local media.

With Udrih (20 points and six assists on Sunday) as center, there's order to the Kings' game, and the rookie Tyreke Evans is taking Martin's place as scorer (22 points). Martin will probably be sidelined for two months after deciding to undergo surgery on his injured wrist.

After six games, Casspi is placed second among the NBA rookies in three-pointers (50 percent), third in terms of shot success (53 percent), and seventh in both point scoring (an average of 9.7 points per game) and rebounds (3.5). "The fact that I couldn't play against Utah gave me greater motivation in this game," Casspi admitted after Sunday's game. "I played well, but what's more important is that we strung together two victories."