Doc Rivers says the Clippers must improve on the defensive boards

The news was hard for Clippers center DeAndre Jordan to swallow when Coach Doc Rivers insisted the team was lackluster in rebounding last season.

That’s because Jordan was second in the NBA in rebounds at 13.8 per game.

So for Jordan, the fact that his coach wants the Clippers to improve their rebounding this season was initially a slap to the face of the 6-foot-11 center who makes his living dominating the backboards.

“They said we’ve got to rebound the ball better and I was like, ‘What? I am rebounding.’ But collectively as a team we’ve got to do a better job,” Jordan said Wednesday after the Clippers’ second day of training camp. “We give up a lot of second-chance points. It’s not just the guards. It’s the bigs too.”

When Rivers brought the team together for practice at the Bren Events Center on UC Irvine’s campus on Monday, he emphasized how defensive rebounding would be important to its success.

The Clippers ranked 25^th in rebounding last season, grabbing 42 per game. But the key stat for Rivers was that his team ranked 17^th in defensive rebounds, getting 33.3 per game.

“There are a lot of long rebounds,” Jordan said. “We play good defense initially and then we give up offensive rebounds and they get second-chance points. We get a lot of stops. So if we can get that stop and get that rebound, we can be that much better.”

The Clippers were next to last in offensive rebounds last season, but that doesn’t bother Rivers because he would rather have his players get back in transition defense than have an all-out crashing of the boards.

“We want our bigs going to the glass, but you have to be a good defensive rebounding team and we were not last year,” Rivers said. “We didn’t have Blake [Griffin because of injuries] and we played small a lot, so we get all that, but … I think the outside world looks at total rebounds. I don’t think any team looks at total rebounds. I think every team looks at defensive rebounding.”

Jordan recalled how Memphis forward Zach Randolph and then-Portland forward LaMarcus Aldridge “kicked our [butts] two years in a row” on the backboards and that annoyed him.

So Jordan vowed to change that by becoming a determined rebounder.

“They just bullied us under the basket, got all the rebounds,” Jordan said. “So I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to make it a point to try and get every rebound possible.’ Now I’ve gotten better at it and I want to continue to get better at it.”

Etc.

The Clippers will have an open practice Saturday at UC Irvine. The practice is free, but it is a ticketed event. Fans can pre-register and print the tickets before the practice by visiting www.clippers.com/openpractice for more information. The doors will open at 11:45 a.m.

broderick.turner@latimes.com

Twitter@BA_Turner