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I think this deserves its own thread. I used nbawowy.com to take a closer look at our rebounding stats:

Carmelo Anthony ON:



For comparison, this is us from 2015-2017 as a team:



As you can see, we're a little (some might say a fair bit) worse on both sides. Now with Kanter gone and us playing small, I expected the worse performance on the offensive board. Yet we were so dominant there over the last couple of seasons, even this year we currently rank 5th in ORB% and would have ranked 7th overall last season. Especially Adams has been tremendous on the offensive glass so far, currently ranking 4th in ORB total.

And this is our rebounding with Steven Adams OFF, which has been horrendous.




What I want to go into detail is the 'prior shot type' rebounding stats nbawowy.com offers.

This is Carmelo Anthony ON, so we have a decent mix between starters and the bench:





And nonw the 2015-2017 Thunder as a team:





Let's focus on the main shot types 3PA, Mid-Range FGA and Layup. So far, our defensive rebounding after 3PA has been at the same level as over the last two seasons: We get roughly 80 % of those. What's gotten worse tho is the rebounding after layups and Mid-Range FGA, both dipping by ~10 %.

Melo's # are roughly on Serge's level over the years (15/20/17 <-> 14/15/17). Westbrook's # are roughly the same as well (24/23/17 <-> 21/23/14). Dre has been a little bit worse (10/9/13 <-> 12/16/8), but I think that's well within simple variance.
The guys completely baffling to me (I'm looking at our starters) are George and Adams tho. In 8 games, they have combined for a total of 2 rebounds off of Layups with Melo on the floor? That's insane. At least George's rebounding off of 3s has been on Durant's level for us (22 <-> 20), even though his rebounding # after midrangers have been worse so far (14 <-> 21). Adams on the other hand has completely fallen off a cliff: He went from 15/15/17 to 8/8/4.

Other stats back Adams having a 'weird' rebounding season on the defensive end so far as wel:

-Out of the 50 guys with the most total offensive rebounds this season, Adams and Mahinmi are the only guys with more offensive rebounds than defensive rebounds.
-Out of the 51 guys taller than 6-10 who have played at least 160 minutes so far, Adams has the 46th most DREB Chances per 36 minutes (per stats.nba.com, When on defense, a player has a defensive rebound chance if they are the closest player to the ball at any point in time between when the ball has crossed below the rim to when it is fully rebounded) at 8.2. Over the last two seasons, he had 9.9 DREB Chances per game.
For comparison: This season's leaders are Howard at 16per36, Kanter at 16per36, Capela at 16per36 and Domas at 15per36. Town has played 50 minutes more than Adams and has had close to 2x as many DREB Chances so far.
-Out of the same 51 guys, Adams ranks 43/51 in DREB Chance % (The percentage of defensive rebounds a player recovers compared to the number of defensive rebounding chances) at 58.9 %. Over the last two seasons, he grabbed 53.3 % of his DREB Chances. He made up for that by deffering defensive rebounds tho - adjusting for those, he grabbed 73.4 % of his DREB Chances. This season, stats.nba.com has him at only one deferred rebound tho.

So what's causing this? The stats are basically telling us that he's not near potential defensive rebounds and that - even when he is - he is not grabbing them at the same rate as other Centers (granted, the tracking just could be off - I don't think he's only deferred one rebound in over 245 minutes).
One possible explanation would be that he isn't in the vicinity of defensive rebounds because he's like a firefighter for our defense, putting them out wherever they occur. Nyloncalculus wrote about this with regards to Al Horford last season:

Per game, Horford defends 6.2 shots at least 15 feet from the basket — the most of any center. Of those, 3.6 are 3-pointers, the second-highest total defended by a center. Of course those are just the shots where he is the defender closest to the shooter. There are plenty of other possessions where Horford is defending a big beyond the 3-point line away from the action and a shot-attempt.

This trend is prevalent across the league — as bigs take more 3-pointers and outside jumpers, their defenders are pulled farther away from the basket. Boston’s defense is comfortable switching, Horford is extremely mobile for his position and so he often spends his time chasing stretchy bigs away from the paint.

This is Adams' defensive breakdown after 8 games:

-< 6 ft.: 4.0 DFGA; 25/30 among starting Centers with at least 6 games played; 26.2 Freq. %
-< 10 ft.: 6.5 DFGA; 17/30 among starting Centers with at least 6 games played; 42.6 Freq. %
-> 15 ft.: 8.0 DFGA; 1/30 among starting Centers with at least 6 games played; 52.5 Freq. % (From 2015-2017, he defended 5.2 of > 15 ft. shots per game.)
-3 pointers: 5.6 DFGA; 5/294 among all guys who have at least played 6 games; 36.9 Freq. %

So Adams is out there defending 3s like never before and is generally farther away from the basket when contesting shots. In fact, Adams has been defending the most 3pointers out of any Thunder so far:



But if it's really about him being more at the perimeter not being back at the basket, shouldn't this affect our rebounding after 3PA as well? Yet, so far it's at the same level as the last two seasons.

Generally speaking, our starters have been doing a worse job at grabbing defensive rebounds (adjusted for deferred rebounds):



So I have to say I don't know what's causing this with the starters. Adams' numbers are suspect to say the least and the other guys aren't really performing like they did historically.
Maybe it's a scheming problem? Last season everybody knew 'grab your man and Russ will start running; just try to keep up with him', but this season they're not doing it (that obviously) and maybe it has thrown people off their game a little bit. On the other hand, Robes, Adams, Grant and Abrines are the only guys who even were around last season, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Maybe we don't have proper communication with Adams not near the rim that often and people don't rebound as a team because of it? To me it looks like opponents gather so many easy rebounds because we're not boxing out.

What's your take on this and the corresponding stats?

I don't know if anybody posted this over here before but.. The shaky limbs of Melo are very self-explanatory.

Pillendreher wrote:One possible explanation would be that he isn't in the vicinity of defensive rebounds because he's like a firefighter for our defense, putting them out wherever they occur.

I think this is a huge reason. This also leaves the opposing teams players without having to contend with Adams for a rebound. As far as our rebounding on long threes, if Adams is the one contesting the threes he might not be in position to turn around and get the rebound. It seems like many times he’s running out to the perimeter trying to get a hand up so he has to gather himself before he can turn around and get the rebound. It likely takes a second or two more than if he were set and was jumping straight up to get a hand in their face. Just a guess.

Roughly one month later...

ORB%: 25.6 % (5th best)
DRB%: 77.2 % (17th best)
TRB%: 50.4 % (11th best)

Adjusted OREB Chance %: 36.6 % (16th best)
Adjusted DREB Chance %: 61.1 % (3rd best)

watch westbrook's defensive effort here on this play, and the choice it forces adams to make, and you can begin to understand why he's not in the vicinity of many defensive rebounds.

had westbrook picked up the shooter on the switch or communicated for adams or george to pick him up while he stuck with ish, the result would be different. westbrook does this often. adams is making defensive plays / choices like this all the time.

slick_watts wrote:

Gfycat Video - Click to Play

watch westbrook's defensive effort here on this play, and the choice it forces adams to make, and you can begin to understand why he's not in the vicinity of many defensive rebounds.

had westbrook picked up the shooter on the switch or communicated for adams or george to pick him up while he stuck with ish, the result would be different. westbrook does this often. adams is making defensive plays / choices like this all the time.

Poor effort, ok. But something else maybe? He looked flat out confused there, like he didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Also, watch Melo, you want to talk about really poor effort, Jesus....On the other end of the effort spectrum look at PG and Dre.

Atomic Punk wrote:

slick_watts wrote:

Gfycat Video - Click to Play

watch westbrook's defensive effort here on this play, and the choice it forces adams to make, and you can begin to understand why he's not in the vicinity of many defensive rebounds.

had westbrook picked up the shooter on the switch or communicated for adams or george to pick him up while he stuck with ish, the result would be different. westbrook does this often. adams is making defensive plays / choices like this all the time.

Poor effort, ok. But something else maybe? He looked flat out confused there, like he didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Also, watch Melo, you want to talk about really poor effort, Jesus....On the other end of the effort spectrum look at PG and Dre.

there's some minor misdirection involved here, but he's gotta defend someone. had adams closed out aggressively smith could have received the ball back just as easily here. westbrook too often gets into these positions where he's defending nobody, either off hand-offs like this or pnr. george and dre are excellent, they hold the defense together for sure. but adams does also, and one of the reasons he's not getting a lot of drb is help situations like this. the difference between westbrook / melo and george, adams, roberson is that the latter three typically don't stand around in space 'confused'.

but i think it's mostly poor effort.

slick_watts wrote:

Atomic Punk wrote:

slick_watts wrote:

Gfycat Video - Click to Play

watch westbrook's defensive effort here on this play, and the choice it forces adams to make, and you can begin to understand why he's not in the vicinity of many defensive rebounds.

had westbrook picked up the shooter on the switch or communicated for adams or george to pick him up while he stuck with ish, the result would be different. westbrook does this often. adams is making defensive plays / choices like this all the time.

Poor effort, ok. But something else maybe? He looked flat out confused there, like he didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Also, watch Melo, you want to talk about really poor effort, Jesus....On the other end of the effort spectrum look at PG and Dre.

there's some minor misdirection involved here, but he's gotta defend someone. had adams closed out aggressively smith could have received the ball back just as easily here. westbrook too often gets into these positions where he's defending nobody, either off hand-offs like this or pnr. george and dre are excellent, they hold the defense together for sure. but adams does also, and one of the reasons he's not getting a lot of drb is help situations like this. the difference between westbrook / melo and george, adams, roberson is that the latter three typically don't stand around in space 'confused'.

but i think it's mostly poor effort.

Yeah, I’m not really arguing against your point, I just think there is more to it maybe. B-Ball IQ is lacking with Russ and Melo. Also, a guy like Russ has to depend so much on athleticism that even a slight drop off in that area can have pretty negative results. Melo on the other hand saves most of his “effort” for the offensive end. I remember George Karl used to preach that if you have to take a possession off to rest, take it on the offensive end.

They lost Gibson and Kanter who both were very good rebounders (Kanter is a dominant offensive rebounder..they really miss that) and now have basically one serviceable big man in Adams. When he goes out of the game they're getting killed on the boards and they don't have anybody that can guard bigs and pretty much every team they play runs 3-4 bigs at them throughout the game. It's a completely flawed roster.

On the season:

2nd in ORB%
13th in ORB%

Last 15 games:

29.3 % ORB% - 1st over the last 15; would rank 1st on the season
80.3 % DRB% - 3rd over the last 15; would rank 5th on the season

At least our rebounding has improved.

Pillendreher wrote:On the season:

2nd in ORB%
13th in ORB%

Last 15 games:

29.3 % ORB% - 1st over the last 15; would rank 1st on the season
80.3 % DRB% - 3rd over the last 15; would rank 5th on the season

At least our rebounding has improved.

Two weeks later.

On the season:

1st in ORB%
13th in DRB%

Sign Emeka Okafor out of the D-League.

Pillendreher wrote:

Pillendreher wrote:On the season:

2nd in ORB%
13th in ORB%

Last 15 games:

29.3 % ORB% - 1st over the last 15; would rank 1st on the season
80.3 % DRB% - 3rd over the last 15; would rank 5th on the season

At least our rebounding has improved.

Two weeks later.

On the season:

1st in ORB%
13th in DRB%

Pretty amazing you are Number 1 in ORB% after Kanter left and you never replaced him with an actual centre. Adams has been killing it on the offensive glass and Roberson has been remarkable for a SG.