Author Topic: Offensive rebounding over getting back on D increases net production [Analytics]  (Read 7367 times)

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Offline BballTim

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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.

  Unrelated, but I despise the tap-out rebound. All I can think of when I see it is "unskilled" or "gimmicky".

I always do it when I play but the ball either goes to the wrong team or hits someone hard on the face. ???

  Now *that* I might enjoy watching...

Offline ewp

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Quote from: BballTim
  Now *that* I might enjoy watching...
[/quote

Especially on the Knicks, although in a Heat vs. Knicks game, as long as it hit someone I'd be happy.

Offline LooseCannon

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  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.

One important thing the study does is establish a baseline for future comparison.  One future study could be to establish who is a good offensive rebounder by establishing different cases (such as two players crash the boards while three defenders are nearby) and seeing who rebounds more or less than their expected value.   Since the data is being recorded by a system that is not in every arena, this seems like something to be done in the future.

As for your scenario of three-point shooting, what you could do is determine a formula based on difference in shooting percentage for 18-footers and three-point shots to determine which is more efficient.  If Brandon Bass is shooting, say, 43.9% on two-point shots from 15 or more feet, then he has to make 29.3% of threes for that to be a shot with a higher expected value.  Since Brandon Bass is a career 0-15 from three, that seems unlikely.

So, having established that it looks like going for the offensive rebound may be better than getting back in transition, in general, one future step is to determine which players benefit more from getting back in transition or are get fewer offensive rebounds than the average player in the same situations.  You can't really move on to that level of analysis without first writing this paper to establish the value of offensive rebounding.
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Offline BballTim

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  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.

One important thing the study does is establish a baseline for future comparison.  One future study could be to establish who is a good offensive rebounder by establishing different cases (such as two players crash the boards while three defenders are nearby) and seeing who rebounds more or less than their expected value.   Since the data is being recorded by a system that is not in every arena, this seems like something to be done in the future.

As for your scenario of three-point shooting, what you could do is determine a formula based on difference in shooting percentage for 18-footers and three-point shots to determine which is more efficient.  If Brandon Bass is shooting, say, 43.9% on two-point shots from 15 or more feet, then he has to make 29.3% of threes for that to be a shot with a higher expected value.  Since Brandon Bass is a career 0-15 from three, that seems unlikely.

So, having established that it looks like going for the offensive rebound may be better than getting back in transition, in general, one future step is to determine which players benefit more from getting back in transition or are get fewer offensive rebounds than the average player in the same situations.  You can't really move on to that level of analysis without first writing this paper to establish the value of offensive rebounding.

  I still think there's a disconnect between measuring typical behavior and expecting that changing the behavior will have the desired outcome. It's an interesting study, just take it with a grain of salt.

Offline mgent

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Obviously it depends on who you have.  If you've got Zach Randolph of course you'll be more productive crashing the glass.  On the other hand if you've got a small team like Bass/Green at PF, no.  Or if you've got a guy like Perk who gets the board and then brings the ball back down to set up a "put back."  Regardless of overall strategy if Doc has the talent like in Leon Powe he has no problem setting him lose.
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Offline Fan from VT

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Quick comment:

People are saying the results may be flawed because teams are doing what they are good at. I don't agree.

If the study found that teams that get back on D and don't go for offensive rebounds do better, then fans of teams with good offensive rebounding would say "yeah, that works for the Celtics, but we can't do that, so this study is biased toward teams like the celtics with good D."


So this study means one of two things:
1. Going for offensive rebounds is a better strategy
or
2. Teams that have the ability to go for offensive rebounds have the types of players that make teams better.

In other words, The Celtics are doing the best strategy for them, and other teams are doing the best strategy for them, and the other teams are better. So it's either strategy or player type.

Offline BballTim

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Quick comment:

People are saying the results may be flawed because teams are doing what they are good at. I don't agree.

If the study found that teams that get back on D and don't go for offensive rebounds do better, then fans of teams with good offensive rebounding would say "yeah, that works for the Celtics, but we can't do that, so this study is biased toward teams like the celtics with good D."


So this study means one of two things:
1. Going for offensive rebounds is a better strategy
or
2. Teams that have the ability to go for offensive rebounds have the types of players that make teams better.

In other words, The Celtics are doing the best strategy for them, and other teams are doing the best strategy for them, and the other teams are better. So it's either strategy or player type.

 I think that part of the reason we don't get a ton of ORebs is not having a big that's a low post player like Shaq or Perk, and I think that our shot selection doesn't help either. I also think that they don't want to give up easy buckets, they don't want to play at too fast a pace, and that they don't want to force KG to have to sprint back on defense too many times.

Offline D.o.s.

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Quick comment:

People are saying the results may be flawed because teams are doing what they are good at. I don't agree.

If the study found that teams that get back on D and don't go for offensive rebounds do better, then fans of teams with good offensive rebounding would say "yeah, that works for the Celtics, but we can't do that, so this study is biased toward teams like the celtics with good D."


So this study means one of two things:
1. Going for offensive rebounds is a better strategy
or
2. Teams that have the ability to go for offensive rebounds have the types of players that make teams better.

In other words, The Celtics are doing the best strategy for them, and other teams are doing the best strategy for them, and the other teams are better. So it's either strategy or player type.

I'm pretty sure people are saying that the study is incomplete, so it would be foolish to really dig into it.

Among those people are the authors of the paper.
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Offline LooseCannon

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I'm pretty sure people are saying that the study is incomplete, so it would be foolish to really dig into it.

One thing that people could be talking about is what hypotheses about offensive rebounding can be tested.
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Offline LB3533

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How many offensive rebounds did Philly get last night. Did they win the game?

Offline Fafnir

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How many offensive rebounds did Philly get last night. Did they win the game?
They also shot 41%

Heck the C's got almost as many of their own misses as the 76ers did. (The C's just had more makes and thus less chances)

The C's had 22 TOs and won too....

Offline LB3533

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How many offensive rebounds did Philly get last night. Did they win the game?
They also shot 41%

Heck the C's got almost as many of their own misses as the 76ers did. (The C's just had more makes and thus less chances)

The C's had 22 TOs and won too....

Yup our turnovers negated their offensive rebound, and we won mainly because we out shot them by 9-10% from the field.

Indy also crushed us on the offensive glass and lost too.

Offline guava_wrench

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How many offensive rebounds did Philly get last night. Did they win the game?
How is that relevant? Wins wasn't a stat they used in their computations. And if you are mentioning Philly, how many men did they send to crash the boards on each play?

Also, the best sign of misunderstanding statistical analysis -- taking a single data point and drawing conclusions from that.

Look at the actual numbers in the video the researchers did. We aren't talking about 0 versus 100. Also, we are talking about expectations. If those numbers were accurate predictors, we would still only hit those rates when taking very large samples.

Offline guava_wrench

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How many offensive rebounds did Philly get last night. Did they win the game?
They also shot 41%

Heck the C's got almost as many of their own misses as the 76ers did. (The C's just had more makes and thus less chances)

The C's had 22 TOs and won too....

Yup our turnovers negated their offensive rebound, and we won mainly because we out shot them by 9-10% from the field.

Indy also crushed us on the offensive glass and lost too.
While these are all good points, I'm not sure anything in the 3 posts I quote here is directly related to the OP's link or even to the subject of the thread.

The point of the paper is that crashing the offensive boards with 2 guys leads to more production than if a team crashes with 1. AFAIK, the study is not saying that crashing the offensive boards with 2 guys leads to more production than the opposing team.

So the best response to the comment about Philly is that if Philly would have crashed the boards less and gotten back on defense more, we would expect with a decent probability that they would have lost by even more points.

Offline jdz101

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Philly's serious problem is they shoot too many long 2s. I actually love their offensive rebounding work. If I was a Philly fan id be seriously angry at Collins for not playing moultrie more. What is there to lose at this point?
« Last Edit: March 07, 2013, 01:49:39 AM by jdz101 »


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