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.)
. Offensive rebounding obviously adds offensive value and likewise defensive rebounding for defense, though how much is debatable. 
