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The modern NBA is increasing 3 point attempts while decreasing offensive rebound rates but logically it would be quite valuable on offense to be strong at both, given the higher rate of 3 pt misses / offensive rebound opportunities. Don't have to get both from same player, but it could help. There are only 8 players in NBA history with an offensive rebounding rate of 10% or higher and about 1 or more 3pt fgm per game. http://bkref.com/tiny/k44tA I stretched the definition slightly to include the only one this season, Jared Sullinger. Kevin Love and Ryan Anderson have done it a few times each but not this season. Will we see more of such seasons? Worth looking for, trying to create, imo.

Love's OR% is only 60% of career average this season. Anderson 75%. How much is aging, injury avoidance, or just giving primacy to the 3 pt shooting?

Larry Bird had four seasons of 1 plus 3 pointer made per game but topped out at the rather low by today's standards of 1.2 per game. He rebounded but only had one season of above 8% offensive rebound rate at 8.3%. Charles and Dominique made this club, albeit during the final season of the short 3 pt line.

At team level there is something brewing. The first team with 25 3 pt attempts per game and at least a 25% offensive rebounding rate was Golden State in 2007-8 under Nellie. There have been 13 such seasons now, with this season seeing the max yet of five. http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... by=year_id This season's Houston Rockets are the first ever to hit 27-27. Watch n see if this continues. The Rocket strategy has been noted before but this to my knowledge if the first time the league history and trend for this specific team combination has been cited.
Only Dwight Howard teams have done thus more than once so far.

But is it as good in playoffs as it looks on paper? Not so far. Just 2 first round series wins from the previous 8 team seasons and nothing beyond. Probably changes somewhat this season but how far will the strategy take a team? Something to watch. Third try for Houston.

Draymond Green has the 1 plus 3ptr made but only half the OR%.

Easing the criteria to 0.8 3pt made and 8% OR rate, I was surprised that no one joined Sullinger. Going to 0.7 / 7% only yields 6 guys this season. http://bkref.com/tiny/SnZgt Stan Van Gundy trades two in same year and had a third (R Anderson) walk away while he coached in Orlando. Does he not like stretch 4s? For offensive or defensive reasons? Patrick Patterson would fit Houston's design but he was shuffled away a few years back. Jerebko is someone to watch further, given near future availability.

It's pretty likely that Quentin Richardson and Terry Mills only made that list because of sampling issues. (29 minutes in one game is not a meaningful sample.) So really, it's down to 6 players.

Worth looking for, trying to create, imo.

On a team level that makes sense - ORB and 3 point shots are clearly 'good things'. On the level of player roles, though, it seems that expecting someone to take 3 point attempts and simultaneously play in the low post is a strange 'division' of labor.

Tough to try to shoot a 3 and Offensive Rebound at one exact moment but you can cut between these positions during a play and between plays. That motion and spacing may be beneficial and more beneficial than always doing one of these things because few individual defenders are good at both defending the three and boxing out a strong offensive rebounder. I doubt today's team defensive schemes have thought too hard and well about defending these very rare dual capables yet. Love, Anderson and Sullinger show that it is possible to do both, in systems that allow, require it. A team which had more than one such player would be even tougher to defend / box out.

Thanks for weeding out Mills and Richardson. I didn't set a game criteria or notice their one game feats. 8 or 6 guys is telling basically the same rarity story though.

Portland has it figured out: they have three-point shooters around LMA with Lopez or Kaman in the middle. (Meyers Leonard is a shooter now.) When Aldridge shoots from outside, Lopez/Kaman muscle in on the other side of the rim and fight for the rebound. They'll do the same with three-pointers. This is what made their offense so potent last year: they have excellent shooting percentages, but it was a near league leading offense because they balanced that with offensive rebounding. They also have a guy, Lillard, who can hit these shots off the dribble, so he can shoot with Lopez safely nestled in near the paint.

I don't think Love can do this anymore with Cleveland. Mozgov and Tristan are usually closer to the rim. I could he could sneak inside if there's a high pick and roll with their center. That way at least one of their big men can be in position to race down court if Love can't get back in time.

Teams can also use the pick setter (usually a center) who initiates early action as a board crasher who ducks inside right as the ball is swinging around the perimeter.

Thanks for the descriptions.

Leonard is providing 0.9 3 ptrs made per game and 5.9% OR%. His OR% was previously above 7% and probably can get up back over it. 10%? I dunno how strong and tough he is or will become. But a guy who might make the lower or higher tier if coached and pushed to do so.

Portland had 24 3pta / 28% OR% last season, about 28 / 24 this season. I guess a good share of the OR% decline may be due to injuries to bigs.

The team 24/24 club never had more than 2 members until there were 3 in 2012-13. 6 last season. 9 this season.

While I have linked 3 point attempts and OR%, I should say that the recent history shows that not everyone is achieving high levels on both and may not be trying that hard on OR%. In 2012-13 all three teams achieved at least 24% OR%, a standard that is not high but at least is not really meager either. In 2013-14 only 75% of the teams with 24 plus 3 ptas per game achieved this. This season it is under 70%. Maybe folks have defensive rationales for this.

It is just half a loaf compared to my original criteria but there are 28 guys in league right now with at least 0.5 3 ptrs made per game and 5 plus % OR%. http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... =ws_per_48 With trade additions Celtics have 4, Hawks and Rockets 3, GSW, OKC and TOR 2. Did any of these teams consciously go for the pair or did they just seek the ingredients individually? I dunno, but these teams may have thought about this more than the others.

Gordon Hayward was a big who made 3s and had a 7 plus OR% at Butler for Stevens. Is Stevens a reason for the Celtics' increase?

Are there college teams that really are deep with guys who hit both criteria? There were a lot who hit 0.5 and 5%, so I checked 1.0 and 7%. Only Baylor showed up as a bigger name school with 2. There were a few others. Lowering the criteria to 0.7 and 7% doubled the total count in college basketball from fifty some or over a hundred but did not find any teams with 3 or additional real big name programs with 2.

Will there be more guys meeting some version of this dual criteria set in 5-10 years? I would expect so, but it may be more happenstance than explicit strategy. The suggestion is out there now though. For the relative few who read here.

It looks like that 3-pointer stat is per game, and not per minutes played, which means that you're throwing out players that didn't get a whole lot of rotation time even if they shot 3-pointers 'regularly' while on the floor. If I search for 1 3-pointer per 36 minutes, I get a longer and more varied list.

http://tinyurl.com/qfq3bw5

Yes, that is worth seeing too. It shows that a dozen players were doing this combo on a pro-rated basis before the recent group did it per game, while Ilyasova and Olynyk join the recent group on pro-rated basis (but not during this season).


Danny Ferry has fairly close to 1 3ptr made per game and 7% OR% his first 2 seasons in NBA and probably achieved at least that much his final 2 seasons at Duke. Perhaps that influenced him a bit in having 3 of these dual skill guys in Atlanta.