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In today's NBA, it seems like pendulum has swung to the point where every team runs back on D after their shot without even contesting the Offensive Glass. This has led to record low Offensive Rebounding % numbers. The goal is to stop transition. But in today's NBA, teams don't push the pace that much. Wouldn't it make sense to crash the glass? Even if you miss the rebound, teams don't push the pace in transition enough to punish you for it. It does seem weird that in the 80's teams crashed the boards relentlessly when their opponents were playing at a breakneck pace.

Offensive rebounding doesn't seem very important in regular season to eventual champions recently. The average regular season rank on offensive rebounding of last 5 champions was 23rd. But 80% of last 20 title winners had the higher OR% in the final series. (Much much less in prior 10 years.) I haven't compared this to other factor level performances though. It matters some, like every factor, but other factors are bigger in size of game impacts and potential importance.


I recall long ago looking at regular season OR% for the Spurs. Their first 3 titles ranked in the top 4 of their OR% performances between 1999 and 2005. They were only ranked between 10-16 but that was better than the 20-22 rankings they had in 3 of the 4 non title seasons in that period. They went on and won 2 titles with OR% ranks in mid to high 20s but it was 2 titles in 10 seasons, 9 of them in the 20s on OR%. Also worth noting, those titles in '07 and '14 were won with higher OR% in the final series.

There was this old thread comparing the ranks on the factors for titlewinners. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=107&hilit=championships

I only used 11 season's worth of data, but when comparing team offensive rebounds/game to win total it had a negative correlation. This surprised me considering it was one of the four factors.

Generally analysis looks at whole league but I am often tempted to ignore the bottom 15-20 teams who don't appear to know what they are doing very well. What they do and don't do can sometimes cloud a trend more visible just looking at the best. That doesn't appear to be a broad case with OR% on first look at this season's data though.

But GSW is 4th on OR%. Was it a priority in the design? I dunno, but with moves for Bogut, Ezeli and Speights I lean toward yes. Or maybe it was more consequence of good shooting and spacing. They aren't good on 5 other factors. Clearly shooting and shot defense were top priorities. As they should be, given the volume of actions. Offensive rebounding produces benefits for both of these top priorities.

cemitten wrote:I only used 11 season's worth of data, but when comparing team offensive rebounds/game to win total it had a negative correlation. This surprised me considering it was one of the four factors.

You really should look at OR%, not OR/game. The latter will be impacted by pace and, more importantly, will tend to be higher the more often a team misses its shots (i.e. negatively correlated with FG%).

colts18 wrote:In today's NBA, it seems like pendulum has swung to the point where every team runs back on D after their shot without even contesting the Offensive Glass. This has led to record low Offensive Rebounding % numbers. The goal is to stop transition. But in today's NBA, teams don't push the pace that much. Wouldn't it make sense to crash the glass? Even if you miss the rebound, teams don't push the pace in transition enough to punish you for it. It does seem weird that in the 80's teams crashed the boards relentlessly when their opponents were playing at a breakneck pace.

The pace this season is actually the fastest it has been in quite awhile (just looking at the past 10 years). Also some negative correlation between 3FGA (which are all at an all-time high) and OREB%.

Also some negative correlation between 3FGA .. and OREB%.

It's true for players and for teams: 3pt artists are seldom strong OReb-ers.

Mike G wrote:

Also some negative correlation between 3FGA .. and OREB%.

It's true for players and for teams: 3pt artists are seldom strong OReb-ers.

Yes, I suspect this is an important part of the explanation. With stretch 4s and even stretch 5s, 4-Out offenses, etc. there are a bunch of offensive players hanging out 23 feet from the basket. A team that is going to miss a lot of shots -- as a 3-point heavy team will -- might be well advised to invest in offensive rebounding. E.g. the last good Supersonics team in 2004-05 featured a 3pt-heavy offense (by the standards of the day) with Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, but complemented them with fierce offensive rebounders such as Reggie Evans, Danny Fortson, and Nick Collison.

But many of today's offenses require all five players to be shooting threats, the longer-ranged the better.

Some people with access to XY data have asked similar questions:

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=10196