RealGM

Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

I think it does add considerably to a player, as it means gaining possession of the ball, which ofcourse is required to score (must have possession to score . Offensive rebounding obviously adds offensive value and likewise defensive rebounding for defense, though how much is debatable.

I think that rebounding especially adds value to players from past eras where the game was played closer to the basket mostly. Getting rebounds was a fight and it meant alot to a team's success. Pat Riley said himself "no rebounds, no rings" and though it's not the only factor ofcourse in how good a team is, it is one of the factors.

Charles Barkley is a player that comes to mind with this. He was a great player and one of the best rebounders ever. I think this makes him a better player, separates a bit, than other greats at his position and other positions. Adding his gravity, attracting defenses as he did, it makes him very valuable. I don't think players like Curry, Durant and Nowitzki, commonly rated in the top 20 by some, are better than Barkley because they added rather little in rebounding compared to Chuck. Also another reason why bigs in history are better than smaller, perimeter players mostly.

Are we including boxing out? Getting back on defense or rebounding while also playing strong defense rather than leaving your man early to get more boards? Era differentials? Not all rebounding is created equal and more than prime Iverson's points are equal to prime Curry's points.

On a team level Oliver had his traditional values as 40% shooting, 25% turnovers, 20% rebounding, 15% FTs

More modern PCA style analysis points towards that probably overrating rebounding/FTs a bit and underrating the other two (something like 45/30/15/10). In the NBA at least - there doesn't seem to be as much difference between the best/worst rebounders as there is the best/worst shooters/ballhandlers/defenders.

FTs seem to generally get lumped with shooting these days to wind up with a 6 factor analysis - PPS/TOV/REB

Generally offensive rebounding seems to have a higher individual potential for impact - seems to follow the traditional view that defensive rebounding is a team game.

Edit: A recentish paper on the topic of the four factors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13032

Had it at 45/34/16/5 for offense

Of course, in the 50s or 60s when offenses were less efficient, rebounding would be more valuable. With the current 3 point spamming craze, rebounds also bounce farther and more randomly, lessening the value of the skill/size/strength equation for dominating the boards.

penbeast0 wrote:Are we including boxing out? Getting back on defense or rebounding while also playing strong defense rather than leaving your man early to get more boards? Era differentials? Not all rebounding is created equal and more than prime Iverson's points are equal to prime Curry's points.

Yep Lopez brothers and Nene are famously guys whose individual rebounder numbers don't look super impressive but their teams were consistently very good rebounding teams because they understood defensive rebounding is a team activity. On the flip side, Dennis Rodman started losing defensive value when he started chasing rebounds. DeAndre Jordan a modern version of this issue.

You cite Dirk, but Dirk was an elite defensive rebounder, particularly in the playoffs and his commitment to always get back on defense rather than chasing offensive rebounds helped his team defenses greatly limiting the transition opportunities for their opponents. Suggesting rebounding to be a weakness for Dirk is just weird.

And for that matter Steph is a very good rebounding PG and having the ball start with your PG is an additional advantage. Look at Oscar, Magic, Kidd, Westbrook as players who helped their teams by getting into transition sooner because of not waiting on an outlet.

beast is correct -- a simplistic look tells you very little. Makes you think Danny Fortson was really doing something. He was not.

Texas Chuck wrote:...

And for that matter Steph is a very good rebounding PG and having the ball start with your PG is an additional advantage. Look at Oscar, Magic, Kidd, Westbrook as players who helped their teams by getting into transition sooner because of not waiting on an outlet.

beast is correct -- a simplistic look tells you very little. Makes you think Danny Fortson was really doing something. He was not.

Not sure I agree here. As we tell our players, the ball moves faster on a pass then on a dribble so getting the ball out to a guard already partially down the floor gets the transition game moving faster than dribbling the length of the floor.

penbeast0 wrote:

Texas Chuck wrote:...

And for that matter Steph is a very good rebounding PG and having the ball start with your PG is an additional advantage. Look at Oscar, Magic, Kidd, Westbrook as players who helped their teams by getting into transition sooner because of not waiting on an outlet.

beast is correct -- a simplistic look tells you very little. Makes you think Danny Fortson was really doing something. He was not.

Not sure I agree here. As we tell our players, the ball moves faster on a pass then on a dribble so getting the ball out to a guard already partially down the floor gets the transition game moving faster than dribbling the length of the floor.

Sure if your big man is a great outlet passer and your guard is moving up the floor. That's not going to be as common as the ball just starting in the hands of your best decision-maker, especially guys like this known for pushing the ball. Luka is another great rebounding guard but he is much more likely to push via the pass than the dribble and most of his Dallas teams were glacially paced.

The value probably goes beyond assigned numbers. Teams that dominate in rebounding control the pace and momentum of the game.

eminence wrote:On a team level Oliver had his traditional values as 40% shooting, 25% turnovers, 20% rebounding, 15% FTs

More modern PCA style analysis points towards that probably overrating rebounding/FTs a bit and underrating the other two (something like 45/30/15/10). In the NBA at least - there doesn't seem to be as much difference between the best/worst rebounders as there is the best/worst shooters/ballhandlers/defenders.

FTs seem to generally get lumped with shooting these days to wind up with a 6 factor analysis - PPS/TOV/REB

Generally offensive rebounding seems to have a higher individual potential for impact - seems to follow the traditional view that defensive rebounding is a team game.

Edit: A recentish paper on the topic of the four factors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13032

Had it at 45/34/16/5 for offense

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?.

DReb% and DRtg relationship over the years along with other factors:



As you can see, defensive rebounding has a decently strong relationship with defensive rating.

Other than a few years in which turnover percentage correlated the most inversely with defensive rating, defensive, rebounding percentage has been the factor that correlates the strongest with a lower defensive rating.

homecourtloss wrote:

eminence wrote:On a team level Oliver had his traditional values as 40% shooting, 25% turnovers, 20% rebounding, 15% FTs

More modern PCA style analysis points towards that probably overrating rebounding/FTs a bit and underrating the other two (something like 45/30/15/10). In the NBA at least - there doesn't seem to be as much difference between the best/worst rebounders as there is the best/worst shooters/ballhandlers/defenders.

FTs seem to generally get lumped with shooting these days to wind up with a 6 factor analysis - PPS/TOV/REB

Generally offensive rebounding seems to have a higher individual potential for impact - seems to follow the traditional view that defensive rebounding is a team game.

Edit: A recentish paper on the topic of the four factors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13032

Had it at 45/34/16/5 for offense

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?.

DReb% and DRtg relationship over the years along with other factors:



As you can see, defensive rebounding has a decently strong relationship with defensive rating.

Other than a few years in which turnover percentage correlated the most inversely with defensive rating, defensive, rebounding percentage has been the factor that correlates the strongest with a lower defensive rating.

DeFG looks like pretty clearly the most correlated on that graph across all eras?

Interesting that turnovers were relatively more important in the late 70s to mid 80s.

Not sure I trust the graph prior to the tracking of defensive rebounds, I would expect notably less predictive power (forcing turnovers being outright a negative thing for the defense doesn't really pass the sniff test).

eminence wrote:
DeFG looks like pretty clearly the most correlated on that graph across all eras?

Interesting that turnovers were relatively more important in the late 70s to mid 80s.

Not sure I trust the graph prior to the tracking of defensive rebounds, I would expect notably less predictive power (forcing turnovers being outright a negative thing for the defense doesn't really pass the sniff test).

I would tend to agree though more turnovers frequently comes from more gambling for steals which can lead to defensive breakdowns. Not sure how consistently that happens though; have to do much more detailed tracking to look at that.

Maybe pulling rim protection for turnover generation; again tough to tell without more detail.

eminence wrote:

homecourtloss wrote:

eminence wrote:On a team level Oliver had his traditional values as 40% shooting, 25% turnovers, 20% rebounding, 15% FTs

More modern PCA style analysis points towards that probably overrating rebounding/FTs a bit and underrating the other two (something like 45/30/15/10). In the NBA at least - there doesn't seem to be as much difference between the best/worst rebounders as there is the best/worst shooters/ballhandlers/defenders.

FTs seem to generally get lumped with shooting these days to wind up with a 6 factor analysis - PPS/TOV/REB

Generally offensive rebounding seems to have a higher individual potential for impact - seems to follow the traditional view that defensive rebounding is a team game.

Edit: A recentish paper on the topic of the four factors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13032

Had it at 45/34/16/5 for offense

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?.

DReb% and DRtg relationship over the years along with other factors:



As you can see, defensive rebounding has a decently strong relationship with defensive rating.

Other than a few years in which turnover percentage correlated the most inversely with defensive rating, defensive, rebounding percentage has been the factor that correlates the strongest with a lower defensive rating.

DeFG looks like pretty clearly the most correlated on that graph across all eras?

Interesting that turnovers were relatively more important in the late 70s to mid 80s.

Not sure I trust the graph prior to the tracking of defensive rebounds, I would expect notably less predictive power (forcing turnovers being outright a negative thing for the defense doesn't really pass the sniff test).

Here are all the years:


DeFG it's for sure just like effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage are for offense.

homecourtloss wrote:

eminence wrote:On a team level Oliver had his traditional values as 40% shooting, 25% turnovers, 20% rebounding, 15% FTs

More modern PCA style analysis points towards that probably overrating rebounding/FTs a bit and underrating the other two (something like 45/30/15/10). In the NBA at least - there doesn't seem to be as much difference between the best/worst rebounders as there is the best/worst shooters/ballhandlers/defenders.

FTs seem to generally get lumped with shooting these days to wind up with a 6 factor analysis - PPS/TOV/REB

Generally offensive rebounding seems to have a higher individual potential for impact - seems to follow the traditional view that defensive rebounding is a team game.

Edit: A recentish paper on the topic of the four factors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13032

Had it at 45/34/16/5 for offense

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?.

DReb% and DRtg relationship over the years along with other factors:



As you can see, defensive rebounding has a decently strong relationship with defensive rating.

Other than a few years in which turnover percentage correlated the most inversely with defensive rating, defensive, rebounding percentage has been the factor that correlates the strongest with a lower defensive rating.

I posted before about offensive rebounding and its effect on offensive rating, defensive rating, and of course net rating.

penbeast0 wrote:Of course, in the 50s or 60s when offenses were less efficient, rebounding would be more valuable. With the current 3 point spamming craze, rebounds also bounce farther and more randomly, lessening the value of the skill/size/strength equation for dominating the boards.

I feel like this is probably the key thing to keep in mind in terms of how the answer to the OP's question changes with time. In a league where no one ever misses, rebounding is worthless. The more they miss, the more important rebounding becomes.

My sense is that the Minneapolis Lakers built their dominance on the backbone of rebounding (first and foremost Mikan, but not just him) more than anything else, and that it's generally been getting less valuable in the time since as guys make more of their shots.

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

So maybe even more than era differences, the thing I tend to emphasize with rebounding is that offensive vs defensive rebounding are really two different things traditionally.

Big offensive rebounding teams do it by crashing the offensive glass.

Effective defensive rebounding teams do it by working together to maximize the amount of court space they control so that they are in position to keep the opponent from slipping through and getting the board.

A player's offensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on the role he's asked to play, but will typically be pretty well approximated statistically by his personal offensive rebounds.

A player's defensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on how and his teammates are working together, and the guy who actually gets the rebound generally gets too much credit while his box-out teammates get too little.

Doctor MJ wrote:

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

So maybe even more than era differences, the thing I tend to emphasize with rebounding is that offensive vs defensive rebounding are really two different things traditionally.

Big offensive rebounding teams do it by crashing the offensive glass.

Effective defensive rebounding teams do it by working together to maximize the amount of court space they control so that they are in position to keep the opponent from slipping through and getting the board.

A player's offensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on the role he's asked to play, but will typically be pretty well approximated statistically by his personal offensive rebounds.

A player's defensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on how and his teammates are working together, and the guy who actually gets the rebound generally gets too much credit while his box-out teammates get too little.

Tend to agree and think your wording with regard to role and "typically" probably allows for this but a stretch big (perhaps more so historically when they were fewer and so centers and perhaps 4s were less used to guarding out on the floor) probably doesn't often get offensive rebounds but perhaps does help offensive rebounding by likely taking away one typical rebounder and loosening the defensive shell.

Reggie Evans says keep these threads coming.

Owly wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

So maybe even more than era differences, the thing I tend to emphasize with rebounding is that offensive vs defensive rebounding are really two different things traditionally.

Big offensive rebounding teams do it by crashing the offensive glass.

Effective defensive rebounding teams do it by working together to maximize the amount of court space they control so that they are in position to keep the opponent from slipping through and getting the board.

A player's offensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on the role he's asked to play, but will typically be pretty well approximated statistically by his personal offensive rebounds.

A player's defensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on how and his teammates are working together, and the guy who actually gets the rebound generally gets too much credit while his box-out teammates get too little.

Tend to agree and think your wording with regard to role and "typically" probably allows for this but a stretch big (perhaps more so historically when they were fewer and so centers and perhaps 4s were less used to guarding out on the floor) probably doesn't often get offensive rebounds but perhaps does help offensive rebounding by likely taking away one typical rebounder and loosening the defensive shell.

In general the value of stretch bigs in the modern game is IMO being actually massively overrated if anything. When you actually look at the game tape of how the vast majority of stretch bigs are being defended, the opposing big isn't actually pulled away from the basket much, if at all in many cases. For example, Brook Lopez next to Giannis, you will hear people talk about how valuable having a 3pt shooting big is next to Giannis to pull the opposing center out of the paint. In actuality, that never happened. Defenders consistently let Lopez jack 3s with literally 10+ feet of space so the effect on spacing was non-existent.

Doctor MJ wrote:

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

So maybe even more than era differences, the thing I tend to emphasize with rebounding is that offensive vs defensive rebounding are really two different things traditionally.

Big offensive rebounding teams do it by crashing the offensive glass.

Effective defensive rebounding teams do it by working together to maximize the amount of court space they control so that they are in position to keep the opponent from slipping through and getting the board.

A player's offensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on the role he's asked to play, but will typically be pretty well approximated statistically by his personal offensive rebounds.

A player's defensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on how and his teammates are working together, and the guy who actually gets the rebound generally gets too much credit while his box-out teammates get too little.

Era does have differences but in any era, getting possession of the ball is big, as the more you have the ball, the more you can score and win the game mostly. Unless there is a big differences between two teams in shooting percentages, getting possession is what makes the difference in winning or not.

For offensive rebounding, as most things, it is effort and skill that leads to effectiveness. Sure, if a player is often near the basket the chances are higher of getting the rebound but they have to know how to do it/ Moses Malone is probably the greatest example of how to do it well.

Defensive rebounding has much to do with instincts, as well as the effort and skill. Boxing out is huge and was a major factor in this facet. Again, closer to the basket a player usually is the more effective they tend to be.

migya wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

migya wrote:Can't recall much talk on the value of rebounding here. What is the value and how valuable is and has been rebounding in the nba?

So maybe even more than era differences, the thing I tend to emphasize with rebounding is that offensive vs defensive rebounding are really two different things traditionally.

Big offensive rebounding teams do it by crashing the offensive glass.

Effective defensive rebounding teams do it by working together to maximize the amount of court space they control so that they are in position to keep the opponent from slipping through and getting the board.

A player's offensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on the role he's asked to play, but will typically be pretty well approximated statistically by his personal offensive rebounds.

A player's defensive rebounding impact is very much dependent on how and his teammates are working together, and the guy who actually gets the rebound generally gets too much credit while his box-out teammates get too little.

Era does have differences but in any era, getting possession of the ball is big, as the more you have the ball, the more you can score and win the game mostly. Unless there is a big differences between two teams in shooting percentages, getting possession is what makes the difference in winning or not.

For offensive rebounding, as most things, it is effort and skill that leads to effectiveness. Sure, if a player is often near the basket the chances are higher of getting the rebound but they have to know how to do it/ Moses Malone is probably the greatest example of how to do it well.

Defensive rebounding has much to do with instincts, as well as the effort and skill. Boxing out is huge and was a major factor in this facet. Again, closer to the basket a player usually is the more effective they tend to be.

The first statement has some truth but it implies that rebounding typically wins out over everything else, and yet our current champion (Thunder) were outrebounded in their past 3 series, and the previous champion (Celtics) were outrebounded in their last two series in 2024. It's absolutely a factor, but in the modern game it doesn't have the same type of dominant affect that I'd expect it used to.

With your breakdown between offense & defense, I feel I need to emphasize a thing:

The worst defensive rebounding team usually gets the rebound over the best offensive rebounding team.

Given this, using a term like "instinct" to describe defensive rebounding is something I'm not comfortable with, as it implies that individual improvisation is what's critical here, but that doesn't fit with mostly getting the rebound even without any distinct individual gift along those lines.

On the other hand, I think it's clear that the guys who excel specifically with defensive rebounding impact - rather than those who actually get the defensive rebounding credit in the box score - are generally playing with higher BBIQ than those who dominate offensive rebounding impact.

As a stereotype: Offensive rebounding is traditionally generally from the young & explosive, while defensive rebounding is from the seasoned veterans.

I do want to make clear that there's certainly more to it than that, but the phenomenon of a young guy getting a ton of rebounds but being more useful at it on offense than defense was a "known" thing for a long time, where I use the quotes to emphasize that this isn't based on rigorous granular analysis but based on things said by coaches.

But while I'd look to avoid saying it's an absolute truism, I will say it's something I've looked for in regression data to see how it bears out, and it generally has. The first major category of play a young explosive guy with size can impact the game with is typically his offensive rebounding ability. (He'll probably be blocking shots too to be clear, but it takes some degree of savvy before that outweighs other issues.)