APBRmetrics

Has anyone tried to quantify the impact of good boxing out on Rebounding? Looking at the Nuggets numbers with Nene and Camby on their team, it seemed odd that the Nuggets rebounding was more successful with Nene than camby despite Camby's huge individual defense advantage.

This is the Nuggets from 05-07. Keep in mind Nene missed 06 so some of the numbers could be biased due to that, though that was Camby's best individual DRB% season with Denver. Camby's 2006 season was ranked 9th all-time in DRB%.

Nene 05-07:
19.3 DRB%, 14.5 TRB%

Camby 05-07:
31.2 DRB%, 19.7 TRB%

With Nene on court:
74.3 DRB%, 51.7 TRB%

With Camby:
72.0 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

Both Nene and camby on court:
73.2 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

With Nene, no Camby:
75.1 DRB%, 52.3 TRB%

with Camby, no Nene:
71.6 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

Nene+Martin:
75.6 DRB%, 54.5 TRB%

Camby+Martin:
72.9 DRB%, 51.1 TRB%

Nene+Melo:
74.5 DRB%, 51.8 TRB%

Camby+Melo:
71.3 DRB%, 50.6 TRB%

Nene+Reggie Evans (arguably the best rebounder in league):
75.1 DRB%, 55.6 TRB%

Camby+Reggie Evans:
72.7 DRB%, 53.7 TRB%

So literally every combination is better with Nene despite his individual rebounding numbers being worse.

This came up again when I looked at Nene vs. Javale Mcgee. McGee has flashy rebounding numbers, but his teams seem to be terrible rebounding with him on the court.McGee has a career 21 DRB% to Nene's 19%. Both played for the 2012 Wizards. Nene had a 25.3 DRB% to McGee's 23.8 DRB%. Thats only 1.5% gap, yet the difference when they were on court was huge.

When Nene was on court, the Wizards had a 73.7 DRB%. The Wizards were a 70.9 DRB% for the whole season.
With McGee on court, They had a 67.9 DRB%.

Same thing happened in Denver where both played. Nene had a 22.6 DRB% to McGee's 21.8%. This gap was even smaller than the gap in their time with the Wizards. but the team results are more pronounced.

The Nuggets had an 78.1 DRB% with Nene on court, best on the team
With McGee, they had a 70.6 DRB%, the worst on the team

So a gap of 7.5 DRB%.


Same thing happened with Dwight Howard which was curious to me. From 2007-2012, the Magic had a 51.8 TRB% with Howard on court compared to 51.2 TRB%. That's with Howard as a 15 Reb guy. Its possible the Magic defenders focus completely on defense and let Howard gobble up the Rebounds. Though to be fair to him, when he was out for 12 games this year, the rebounding (and defense) collapsed. So that could go hand in hand with the theory that the Magic let Howard rebound and the other 4 guys play defense.

http://www.d3coder.com/thecity/a4pm/
http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/of ... rebounding
http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/de ... rebounding

The latter two are ranked using a mix of individual rebounding numbers and adjusted rebounding (which was better at forecasting than adjusted rebounding only). They do not include 2012

When the Wizards made the trade for Nene (which I didn't like for a variety of reasons -- none of them having to do with the desire to keep Javale McGee, but that's a topic for another day), one of their front office guys told me that one of their big reasons was that Nene was #1 in defensive rebounding box outs. Also that Nene is a terrific screen/roll defender.

Isn't it possible that with Camby/Dwight on the court teams had a different rebounding strategy than without them because of their high numbers?
Also I wonder is it even a fair comparison with reb% only? This way aren't we missing a possibility that maybe without Camby/Dwight there were just less misses forced so there was less opportunities to rebound so it was easier to have a higher reb%?

Reb% is percentage of available rebounds, so number of misses does not effect this.

I wanted to look at the 3 best PF (Duncan, Dirk, KG) of our generation to see how they affected rebounding. I went from 01-07 since they were all in their primes and they all played for the same team in that span.

KG (18.9 TRB%, 28.7 DRB%):
51.0 TRB%, 72.7 DRB% on court
48.9 TRB%, 70.5 DRB% off court
Diff: 791 total Rebounds, 422 defensive rebounds (this is the difference in rebounds on court in comparison to what would be expected rebounds based on the off court rebounding%)
2.09 TRB/100 TRB opportunities, 2.15 DRB/100

Dirk (13.9 TRB%, 23.5 DRB%):
50.2 TRB%, 71.9 DRB% on court
49.4 TRB%, 70.5 DRB% off court
Diff: 298 total rebounds, 268 defensive rebounds
0.81 TRB/100, 1.42 DRB/100

Duncan (18.6 TRB%, 26.7 DRB%):
51.7 TRB%, 73.9 DRB% on
49.9 TRB%, 72.6 DRB% off
Diff: 631 Total rebounds, 229 defensive rebounds
1.83 TRB/100, 1.28 DRB/100

So based on that, someone like Duncan was worth 1.17 rebounds per game (631 rebounds/540 games played). So maybe individual defensive rebounding might be slightly overrated. KG's defensive rebounding is worth 0.75 Defensive rebounds per game. So while they all have great individual numbers, team rebounding might be more important.

I should point out that in the OP I made a mistake with the Howard numbers. I didn't divide the team possession by 5 so that lowered Howard's numbers. Here are Howards real numbers from 07-12:

51.8 TRB%, 76.2 DRB% on court
49.8 TRB%, 74.5 DRB% off court
Diff: 563 total rebounds, 252 defensive rebounds
1.96 TRB/100 TRB opportunities, 1.69 DRB/100

So howard is ahead of Duncan and slightly behind KG. Interesting thing is that the Magic ORB% is actually higher with Howard off the court so Howard cost them about 43 ORB (-0.31 per 100) compared to his backups. Who knows, maybe they crash the boards more when Howard is out of the game or take less 3 pointers.

colts18 wrote:... Interesting thing is that the Magic ORB% is actually higher with Howard off the court so Howard cost them about 43 ORB (-0.31 per 100) compared to his backups. Who knows, maybe they crash the boards more when Howard is out of the game or take less 3 pointers.

Since Dwight is the key ingredient -- dominant inside threat -- in facilitating the Magic shooting record #'s of 3-pt attempts, it's probably true that they used a different strategy without him.

When players are in general closer to the basket, they'll get more rebounds.

Marcin Gortat was one of the better OReb-ing centers off the bench, and he was Dwight's backup for a few years in this interval.