Author Topic: Offensive rebounding over getting back on D increases net production [Analytics]  (Read 7375 times)

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Offline jdz101

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yfhuODOJ7s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Along with the goldsberry thing on interior defense these findings are pretty interesting. Would have been great to see this analysis just done on the celtics and not as an entire league.

Discuss


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Offline timobusa

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Hey Doc Rivers, watch this video.

Offline KGs Knee

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Ha!

I've got not problem using advanced metrics to analyze individual playes, particularly as a means of either re-enforcing or disproving what the "eye test" might say about a player, but supposed analysis like this is ridiculous.

I'd wager a guess these "basketball analysts" don't even understand the basic concepts of basketball.

Offline PhoSita

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I think the trouble w/ this is that it doesn't account for a particular team's strengths.

The  Celtics are not a good rebounding team.  They wouldn't be even if they sent 5 guys to crash the glass.  They also aren't a very good offensive team.  Even if they get an extra possession,
the chances they'll score aren't necessarily all that high.

They are, however, a very good defensive team.  They actually generate a lot of points off of their defense.  So it makes sense to get back and get the defense set.  For a team like the Celtics,  you probably have a better chance to generate turnovers and gets points in transition that way, rather than sending Brandon Bass and KG to crash the glass.

Against the bigger and / or younger teams, chances are the Celtics will fail to secure the offensive rebound and the other team will race down the court and get an easy bucket.  Or even if they get the offensive rebound, they'll fail to turn it into points because they don't have any good inside scorers, and they're not a very good offensive team in general.

For most teams though, this makes good sense.  If you have bigs who can effectively crash the glass, and your likelihood of stopping your opponent if you get your defense set is not as high, then trying to generate extra offensive possessions makes sense.
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Offline fairweatherfan

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically. 

Online Roy H.

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Here's the paper itself:

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/To%20Crash%20or%20Not%20To%20Crash%20A%20quantitative%20look%20at%20the%20relationship%20between%20offensive%20rebounding%20and%20transition%20defense%20in%20the%20NBA.pdf

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.


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Offline jdz101

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.

Yeah. As I said it would have been nice if they did this analysis just on the celtics, not on the entire league as a whole.

To be taken with a grain of salt, but perhaps a happy medium between this study and what the doc rivers ideology could be found.


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Offline PhoSita

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.

Yeah, I think what this tells us is that if you have the personnel to crash the glass and go for offensive rebounds / put-backs, you should definitely do it.  But that's not the same thing as saying that every team in the league should start crashing two guys.
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Offline wahz

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The brutal part for me in this debate about Doc and his anti offensive board stance, if you will, is that I grew up watching Cowens and Silas win a title for us because of tremendous hustle on the offensive boards. I have no idea what the advance stats say about those guys but they saved us time after time after time getting another chance and scoring themselves or getting Hondo or Jo Jo involved. Indeed I guess I feel like Tommy's teams were the anti doc philosophy team: every game mattered, everything was contested.

Offline Fafnir

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.
Not to mention that Doc has shown a willingness to let good offensive rebounders crash when we've had them on the court.

Rondo is allowed to go for them, Glen Davis when he was the 4th big, Kendrick Perkins, Powe, and most recently Jared Sullinger.

We certainly don't make it a point to have two bodies on the offensive glass most times like many teams, but you have to think its somewhat talent based. (though they've also tried to get a lot of shooting bigs over the years too, ones that don't crash)

Offline D.o.s.

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.

Yeah. As I said it would have been nice if they did this analysis just on the celtics, not on the entire league as a whole.

To be taken with a grain of salt, but perhaps a happy medium between this study and what the doc rivers ideology could be found.

I'm sure that the teams who are invested in advanced statistics are in the process of weeding through the data to look at exactly that--and the Celtics are one of those teams.

I'm also sure that none of us pleebs will ever see that information coming from one team, since all the major players in that community have been gobbled up by individual teams--a fact that has been repeated ad nauseum  over the last week or so with the annual Sloan Conference Advanced Stats News and Opinion Orgy.
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Offline CelticConcourse

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It's an interesting analysis but the main thing they're not accounting for is that while "crashing" seems to be the better strategy on the aggregate, teams with personnel who are below-average offensive rebounders - like, I don't know, us - have a lower expected return than teams with average or above-average O rebounding personnel.  This can change the math substantially. 

I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.
Not to mention that Doc has shown a willingness to let good offensive rebounders crash when we've had them on the court.

Rondo is allowed to go for them, Glen Davis when he was the 4th big, Kendrick Perkins, Powe, and most recently Jared Sullinger.

We certainly don't make it a point to have two bodies on the offensive glass most times like many teams, but you have to think its somewhat talent based. (though they've also tried to get a lot of shooting bigs over the years too, ones that don't crash)

Wilcox has been crashing lately, as well.
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Offline LooseCannon

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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.
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Offline Fafnir

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I'm also curious how they calculated expected return - whether that's just a generic points per possession or if they're actually calculating expected return after offensive boards specifically.
Most studies that I've seen account for the increased FG% and FTA rate off of offensive rebounds from put backs and the like. (and the uncontested kick out 3s)

I'll have to browse through the link Roy gave later to see if they did in this one.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2013, 10:29:23 PM by Fafnir »

Offline celticsleyte

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I would like to see the guys crashing the boards more as I do not like to just concede the rebounds to the opponent.  We may be getting back quickly on defense but after a while the other team figures out they can take off as soon as the shot is up because nobody is contesting the boards.

Really miss Rondo at least with him the opponent had to worry about him attacking the glass.  Wilcox seems to be the only guy attacking the offensive glass. Sully was doing a good job there as well.