Analysis on the Rebound

Rebounds are an interesting stat, especially the offensive variety. An offensive rebound means you missed a shot. While you have another opportunity to score, why not just make the first shot? Defensive rebounds terminate the other team's possession, so they're usually good for the team. However, defensive rebounds are often an oversight, and focus is applied to offensive rebounds for providing scoring opportunities. Doesn't every rebound give your team possession after a missed shot, whether it's off your miss or the other team's? On defensive rebounds, you just happen to have to run down the floor before you can shoot ... well, I guess you don't have to.

Rebounds are also analyzed poorly. Rebounds are divided into offensive, defensive, and total rebounds, with total rebounds being the sum of offensive and defensive rebounds (Roy has a degree in mathematics, and he was consulted on this). So, people often compare offensive and total rebounds for each team in a game, and sometimes will compare defensive rebounds. This doesn't make any sense (again, I took issue with my HS coaching staff over treatment of rebound statistics). In tonight's Cavs v. Heat game, Cleveland ended up with 11 offensive rebounds, four more than Miami's seven. But, everything is relative, especially rebounds.

Cleveland had 11 offensive rebounds. Miami had 46 defensive rebounds. Thus, of the 57 rebounds off Cleveland misses, the Cavs only got 19.3% of them. Miami had 7 offensive rebounds, while Cleveland had 28 defensive rebounds. Obviously, 7 of 35 is 20%. Thus, while Cleveland was outrebounded by 14 total rebounds (53 to 39), they grabbed 19.3% of rebounds on their misses and 80% of rebounds on Heat misses. Miami, on the other hand, controlled 80.7% of Cleveland misses and 20% of their own missed shots. Thus, the rebounding was, essentially, even. A cursory look at the total rebounds wouldn't tell that story. You have to dig a little deeper. The reason for the discrepancy in rebound numbers - offensive, defensive, and total - was the hideous shooting by the Cavs (33.7% on FG's) and the solid shooting of the Heat (51.8%). Obviously, rebounds can also occur off of missed FT's, but not all missed FT's result in a rebound (only if the last FT of a sequence is missed) and, based on the similarity of the FT stats in the game, the FT's are negligible compared to the FG difference.

Interesting note:

I'm not sure what prompted me to write this post tonight. I caught a few short portions (enough to make sure the blowout was sustained throughout) of the aforementioned game, but nothing substantial. Roy is always harping on me to add stats to my posts, so I figured I'd get them in there before he could tell me to fix it. Well, the first game on the ESPN - NBA - Scoreboard was the Cleveland v. Miami game. It turned out to be a perfect example. I guess some nights you get lucky, even after you get married.