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In Rodman’s era, there are only a handful of players besides him who ever averaged as many as fourteen rebounds in a single season, much less over the course of an entire career.

Rodman averaged less than thirty-two minutes per game in his career, meaning he pulled down close to twenty rebounds per forty-eight minutes of NBA action (the length of a complete game). Forget that he didn’t play as much as most great players, and wasn’t even a fulltime player for half his career. He was, by far, the greatest rebounder of his generation. For a twenty-year span beginning in 1987, only two players (Karl Malone and Dikembe Mutombo) pulled down more total rebounds than Dennis. And in an era where no one else could manage to average as many as twelve rebounds per game, Dennis pulled down 13.94.

Leading Rebounders

1987: Charles Barkley: 14.6 rebounds per game

1990: Hakeem Olajuwon: 14.0 rebounds per game

1992: Kevin Willis: 15.5 per game

2000: Dikembe Mutombo: 14.1 per game

2003: Ben Wallace: 15.4 per game

The players below Rodman on that list all played more minutes per game than he did, and yet all had fewer rebounds per contest. Compare Rodman with all the great rebounders in today’s NBA, like Ben Wallace. They all come up short compared to Dennis.

For most of his first four seasons, Dennis came off the bench for Chuck Daly’s Pistons. In his first full season as a starter, he finished second to David Robinson in rebounds (1991). For the next seven seasons, Rodman led the NBA in rebounds. He averaged more than eighteen rebounds per game in a three-year period beginning in 1993. No other NBA player had averaged as many as eighteen rebounds in a game since 1974, when Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes averaged 18.1.

Most Rebounds per game, 1987-20071

13.9 Dennis Rodman

11.9 Tim Duncan

11.7 Charles Barkley

11.6 Shaquille O′Neal

11.4 Kevin Garnett

And the Worm did more than just specialize in rebounds. He was also a defensive specialist, adept at guarding players at different positions. He was used at first by Pistons head coach Chuck Daly to play against the opposing team’s big guard, small forward, or power forward. In later years, there wasn’t a player at any size—including Shaquille O′Neal—that Rodman couldn’t guard. In 1990, Rodman was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year. He won the award the following year as well. Rodman was also voted a First Team All-Defensive forward seven times.

Rodman led the NBA in field goal percentage in 1989, hitting close to 60% of his shots. And in his first four seasons, he hit on more than 57% of his field goal attempts. Not only that, Rodman wasn’t the one-dimensional (defense-oriented) player that he became toward the end of his career. He actually had more total points than rebounds after his fourth season in the league.

Beginning with his fifth season, Rodman averaged 6.4 points and 15.9 rebounds per game for the rest of his career. Chuck Daly, who coached Rodman for his first seven years, said that Dennis was a Hall of Fame player in his early Detroit years, and that the Chicago Bulls wouldn’t have won their final championship without Dennis’ offensive rebounding.

Putting aside both his rebounding excellence and his overall defensive brilliance, Rodman was also a winning player overall. In 1988, the Pistons went 20-4 with Rodman in the starting lineup. In 1989, Rodman was a key contributor to a team that won sixty-three games (the most in the league) and took home the NBA Championship. In 1990, the Pistons were champions again, chiefly because they went 34-9 in the games Rodman started.

In 1993, Detroit finished only 40-42. But they went 36-26 with Dennis in the lineup, and won only four of the twenty-four games they played without him. In the next five seasons, Rodman played on clubs that won fifty-five, sixty-two, seventy-two (a league record), sixty-nine, and sixty-two games. He played on the team with the best record in the NBA four times, in 1995 with the Spurs, and in 1996, 1997, and 1998 with the Bulls.

It wasn’t a coincidence.