Basketball Statistics Blog

Coach's Digest: About the Available Rebounds

In the case that a team does miss a shot, it can prolong its possession and give itself an additional chance to score by rebounding its own misses. Team rebounds per game, team offensive rebounds per game, etc, are not a worthwhile stat, that a statistical myth:

Oreb% = Offensive Rebs / (Offensive Rebs + Opponent's Defensive Rebs)

In this way, we only measure how many rebounds a team catches based on what's available. For example, if you use "team offensive rebounds per game," a team that shoots 30% is probably going to catch a lot of offensive rebounds, whether they're a good rebounding team or not. If you use Oreb%, you're looking at a ratio of how many rebounds a team grabbed compared to how many were available.

Photograph: Vedia PhotoStream

Rebound percentage: The percentage of all available rebounds that a player or team catches, often fails into offensive rebound percentage and defensive rebound percentage. This is a better measure of rebounding physical ability than rebound rate because it adjusts for game pace, although total rebound percentage is distortioned by the ratio of offensive and defensive rebound opportunities. Therefore, a team with a really great defense will have its total rebound rate artificially exaggerated because defensive rebounds are much easier to catch. Usually, rebound opportunities are estimated for players based on the team's rebound opportunities per minute, but play-by-play data as that used by the eBA System can identify a player's exact opportunities.

Rebound percentage for teams = Reb / ( Reb + OPPReb )

Rebound percentage for players =
( Reb * Min ) / (( TMReb + OPPReb ) / ( TMMin / 5 ))

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