Team Rebounding
Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:45 pm
from Zach Lowe's piece on espn today
File this away if you're looking for vulnerabilities within the Clippers: Their defensive rebounding sinks to almost league-worst levels with Harrell on the floor, per NBA.com. It's unclear exactly why that is happening, how much is on Harrell, and whether the problem will persist once LA plays its best lineups again.
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For one, Harrell leads the league in boxouts, per NBA.com. He's not shirking duties. The problem might be what happens after the boxout. Our friends at Second Spectrum can estimate how likely a player is to grab a rebound based on his location when the shot goes up. Harrell fares quite well there; he burrows for deep position early.
Second Spectrum also has more sophisticated metrics that measure how much players improve those chances while the shot is airborne, and how many rebounds above or below expectations they get based on their starting location.
Harrell ranks toward the bottom of the league in those measures. (In one, he is somewhere below the first percentile among all players.) The very best rebounders can box out and go up to get rebounds. Harrell appears to be able to do the first, but not the second. Against bigger centers -- and when he gets tired -- Harrell sometimes struggles to hold those boxouts:
None of this makes Harrell a bad rebounder. The Clippers might just need a great one at his position. Harrell tends to play in smaller lineups that include Lou Williams, who does not exactly clean the glass.
Harrell is only 6-foot-7, so it's not shocking he might have trouble holding 7-footers at bay. Again: He's doing his best. The dude exudes fight
I'm not sure what the fix is, or if there needs to be one. In an encouraging sign, lineups featuring Harrell, Kawhi Leonard, and Paul George -- aka, the lineups that really matter -- have rebounded at about a league-average level.
Ivica Zubac is stout on the glass; maybe Doc Rivers could play him in crunch time more when the Clippers are ahead -- provided he can survive on defense. The Clippers have trade assets and an urgent motivation to make a deal now, but upgrading at center does not seem like their most pressing need. Perhaps they disagree.
