How Important Is Individual Defensive Rebounding?

[EvanZ]

Reggie Evans 39% DRB
Nets w Evans : 76.7%
Nets w/o Evans : 71%

To put this in perspective, that 6% difference would account for ~2pts to a team's DRTG, which over the course of a season would mean about 5 additional wins.

That's actually a surprisingly large difference, and maybe one of the biggest effects you can find and Evans has an insane 39% DRB% this season. Humphries and Blatche each average 23.7% when Evans is off the court. Humphries rarely plays with Evans, but Blatche has had 1000 possessions with him on the court. In those possessions, Blatche averages 15.4%, an 8 %-point drop. Pretty significant.

Someone with more time can do this for Asik, Hickson, Vucevic, etc. You'll find similar results. The actual DRB% is probably somewhat correlated with team DRB%, but really it's a complex relationship, and the gains are mostly marginal. I also think a surprisingly large part of (team) defensive rebounding has to do with defense and what kinds of shots you allow the opponent to take.

[Neil Paine]

Berri is also pretty dug in on usage. See this post for example: http://wagesofwins.com/2013/04/01/how-d ... ter-story/, in which Berri notes that the Rockets have the same # of FGA with and without Harden, and therefore there is no such thing as shot creation. Seriously. After years of debating the issue, it appears that Berri doesn't even have the faintest idea what this discussion is about.

I would argue that he knows exactly what the discussion is about. He's just doing his level best to keep others from having a faint idea.

[Guy]

I would argue that he knows exactly what the discussion is about. He's just doing his level best to keep others from having a faint idea.

Perhaps. What makes you think that?

If so, it would require a pretty awesome level of cynicism to keep writing the stuff he does, not to mention encouraging his followers (Dre, Arturo) to keep parroting stuff he knows is wrong, and giving them a platform to do it......

[Neil Paine]

Perhaps. What makes you think that?

If so, it would require a pretty awesome level of cynicism to keep writing the stuff he does, not to mention encouraging his followers (Dre, Arturo) to keep parroting stuff he knows is wrong, and giving them a platform to do it......

I know, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, etc. But by now he has to be willfully turning a blind eye to the flaws in his process. They've been pointed out to him by too many different people, from too many different angles. Personally, I think he has too much riding on the Wins Produced narratives (usage is overrated, only WP knows the "real" truth of player productivity, "I'm smarter than GMs", etc.) to reverse course now. He has to keep doubling down, and keep going into full-on obfuscation mode whenever an outsider tries to deprogram his followers.

[talkingpractice]

But by now he has to be willfully turning a blind eye to the flaws in his process. They've been pointed out to him by too many different people, from too many different angles. Personally, I think he has too much riding on the Wins Produced narratives (usage is overrated, only WP knows the "real" truth of player productivity, "I'm smarter than GMs", etc.) to reverse course now. He has to keep doubling down, and keep going into full-on obfuscation mode whenever an outsider tries to deprogram his followers.

+1. I've thought for a year or so now that this has become way more likely than all other alternative explanations, particularly in regards to the defensive rebounding issue.

[v-zero]

The biggest thing to overcome is the obvious issue with him being Dr Emperor Professor Berri to the WOW readership, which is amusing, because he's an economist.

[Guy]

I know, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, etc. But by now he has to be willfully turning a blind eye to the flaws in his process.

It's hard to know what he really believes. Never underestimate humans' ability to screen out threatening information. As Upton Sinclair famously said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

But what has been striking is that, while Berri has criticized many studies that reach unfortunate (for him) conclusions -- Eli's studies of rebounds and usage, Pot/Kettle, various retrodiction studies that show WP faring poorly -- he has made no effort to do these studies the "right" way and find out the answer. This is especially revealing with regard to predicting future wins, which is the ultimate test of his metric. It would be easy enough for Berri to do such a study -- potentially vindicating WP and silencing his critics --- but he hasn't. We can't know whether Berri has done a retrodiction study and actually knows that WP is a worse predictor than several metrics he ridicules, or if he's simply never done the work. But at a minimum, he's afraid to find out the answer. So whether or not he knows he is wrong, he certainly fears he is. And the result is that Berri is no longer in the research business, but rather in the reputation preservation business.

[Mike G]

The actual DRB% is probably somewhat correlated with team DRB%, but really it's a complex relationship, and the gains are mostly marginal. I also think a surprisingly large part of (team) defensive rebounding has to do with defense and what kinds of shots you allow the opponent to take.

No team really puts 5 guys on the floor without at least a couple of strong rebounders, do they?
Neither does anyone put 5 big rebounders out there together. The reasons should be obvious.

A team can't function at all without someone who can bring the ball up the floor. At least a couple of guys need to be able to shoot. And a couple or more need to get defensive rebounds. More of everything is better.