I read through it a week or so ago. For as big of a deal as the Sloan Conference is, I was surprised by how incomplete the paper seemed. The authors acknowledge a lot of the flaws in their study, but at this point, their analysis just doesn't tell us a lot.
This is how research works. It's incomplete because the available data is incomplete. Sometimes, it is necessary to do analysis that tell us that we can't know. I think Doc has made statements in the past suggesting that the Celtics' in-house analysis (which is presumably farther along what gets publicly presented) tells him that he doesn't need to push offensive rebounding.
The study did acknowledge that there is a trade off between crashing the boards and transition defense, so one reasonable hypothesis is that the team that would benefit the least from emphasizing offensive rebounding might be a team with poor rebounders and a good half-court defense, while a team that should go for the rebound more is a team with good rebounders and offense and a poor defense that will give up points anyways even if its players get back early on defense.
Since the quality of personnel hasn't been factored in, perhaps it will be revealed that certain types of players should go for the offensive rebound and other types of player shouldn't, or that players' tendency to crash the boards should change depending on who they are guarding.
The problem is the study is measuring the results of what happens when teams are doing what they do (or think they do) well. That doesn't really mean that teams could change what they do and still be successful. Imagine my doing a study claiming that three point shots are much more efficient shots to take than 18 footers. The doesn't mean that Brandon Bass will improve his scoring efficiency if he starts chucking up shots 6 feet farther from the basket than he does now. While it's more efficient in terms of scoring to have players that are good 3 point shooters than players who are good mid-range shooters, it wouldn't be more efficient to just tell all your players to get behind the arc before they shoot.
I think you're over-stretching what the video/paper is trying to say. The piece never says you'll be a far better team if you send all 5 guys to crash, and fail to get back on defense. That's ludicrous. All the video is saying is that the league as a whole benefits off missed jumpshots when they send one guy to crash instead of nobody, or two guys to crash instead of one.
A study you can definitely poke plenty of holes in, but interesting fodder all the same.
My point was they're measuring teams playing the way they think they'll be the most successful. That doesn't mean that teams altering their play will improve their success, as they seemed to implying. The Celts might have less success sending in KG and Bass for Orebs than the Jazz might have with Al and Milsap, they might also lose more in transition defense than (for instance) the Clippers.
Yep, understood, and the Cs/doc rivers have obviously done their own analysis on this which they believe very strongly in.
As far as personal opinion goes I just think that zero guys trying to create a second possession or points on a rebound has to be detrimental to a team over large numbers of missed shots. I see it a lot with the celtics.
I don't care if it's Brandon Bass, Jared Sullinger or Kevin Garnett, if one celtics player goes for the offensive rebound, that doesn't necessarily mean an extra guy in transition for the opposition. That can also mean the opposition needs to send another guy to contest Brandon or Sully, and if they still beat out a couple of guys under the rim for the offensive rebound to get another shot for the celtics that can be a huge lift for the team. Intangibles are often raved about on this forum; some of my most exhilarating intangibles this year have been guys fighting multiple opposition players under the rim for a putback. Sully's beautiful putback against Camby being one memorable one.
Teams overall are getting smaller these days. They aren't exactly laden with amazing rebounders at both 4 and 5 positions these days, but they're still benefitting from offensive glass more than the celtics are.
The Knicks start Carmelo Anthony at the 4 but you try telling them that tyson chandler's tap-out rebounds to their three point shooters aren't invaluable to them on offense. Tyson chandler whilst being a good rebounder, isn't an amazing rebounder, he was shown to be far inferior to Kevin Love in this area in the Olympics. He is still part of a tap-out system that is extremely effective though.
I don't know, I guess this study has scratched the surface of something I believe would help the celtics.