How do you think rebounding affects the outcome of a game?

[[not a gameplay integrity or fairness topic!!!!]]

From what I can tell, rebounding is far from a 'game-winning' team attribute (~ath/spd/def/per?). When looking at a box score, rebounding advantage / disadvantage should clearly jump out with total and offensive rebounding statistics. But, rebounding stats look like as much of a coin flip in each box score as FT shooting. Usually, the worse team has more offensive rebounds because they miss more. Plus, rebounding isn't a particularly hard attribute to recruit, even at D3. So what do you guys think, can superior rebounding help a team win a championship or does the sim not reward rebounding advantages to the degree that it should?

I feel rebounding is important for M2M and zone. But for press..... PUNT!

there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/27/2020 12:54:00 PM (view original):
there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Gil- thanks for presenting this. This formula is a great was to assess if your team has a rebounding problem. Given we have limited rosters, what are the controllables for a coach who identifies a problem mid season?

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)
2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

Thanks

You can't win without rebounds. That seems pretty important.

Posted by jptrainwreck on 8/27/2020 1:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/27/2020 12:54:00 PM (view original):
there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Gil- thanks for presenting this. This formula is a great was to assess if your team has a rebounding problem. Given we have limited rosters, what are the controllables for a coach who identifies a problem mid season?

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)
2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

Thanks

Also interested to hear Gil answer but I will take a shot:

First up, Gil understands the sim engine and ratings far beyond me, but I've ran a lot of math on it. Rebounding is about 1.2 times as important as guard ballhandling and .27 as times as important as offense/defense splits in a motion/man. So crudely, you can estimate the game is:

33.3% defense (weighted towards the players guarding those with more distro)
33.3% offense (weighted towards players who take more shots)
18.4% rebounding (weighted towards 4-5 and away from 1-2)
15.0% ball handling (weighted heavily towards PG and secondary towards SG/SF)

in a motion man. And then how you determine a players offensive/defensive skill depends on set, 3pt setting, etc.

Everything in this game is a tradeoff. If you're a bad rebounding team, you still don't want to accept a tradeoff to slightly improve your rebounding and hurting your offense/defense a moderate amount. 70 Spd 40 Reb is better than 40 spd 50 reb at the 3 in literally any situation with any combinations of players around them and any other combination of ratings on that player.

First up, "Reb" stats do NOT correctly represent the true contribution to the team rebounding formula by players. Individual reb stats are pretty much window dressing.

1) yeh SF rebounding is very nice, but IMO people tend to overrate it and underrate guard rebounding. people seem to think SF rebounding is a primary core and rebounding at the 2 is meaningless. 30 reb at the 2 50 reb at the 3 should generate better results than 1 reb at the 2 and 60 reb by far.

2) 4 and 5 have the same rebounding influence in man press and 3-2 right? But moving someone with good REB from 4 to 3 or 3 to 2 definitely decreases their influence.

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)

- rebounding is weighted by position. the rebounding value curve is sort of soft - definitely, the 4 and 5 matter the most, and it goes down meaningfully, but guard rebounding is still pretty damn useful. for what its worth, high rebounding guards have been by far my favorite archetype since i got about 1 year into this game. got to love em. the utility is insane - a pf/c's reb is one of the most valuable ratings on the floor, even in todays game, and a guard's rebounding is something around 40% as valuable as a centers - maybe even higher - which means you can add major value to a great guard who already has higher utility ceilings than any big and just hit stupid levels of value in a single player (when i say even in today's game - when fg% was lower in the older days, and scoring was more guard driven, rebounding as a whole mattered slightly more but especially relative to big man off/def, as i mentioned earlier, because big man offense was so low of a threat in the first place - so reb used to be like REALLY freaking important for bigs, and was the 4/5s most important rating by far all the way from the lowest d3 to the highest of d1. now many d1 especially would take ath over reb, but its a real competition at all levels).

but anyway, even with big men being a lot more balanced (mattering significantly on off, def, and reb, instead of being essentially rebounding bots), rebounding as a whole, team wide, is still almost as important. fg% is higher today than in the old game, for several reasons (bigs are just simply better scorers, offense has shifted away from 3s to a small but not insignificant way as a result, and the top end scorers in d2/d3 are so stupidly over powered it brings up the whole fg% of the competitive community). this means rebounding is a little less important, but if fg% is like 3% higher, its not like massively eating rebounding. what is WAY different is big man balance is much more of a thing than it used to be. but guard reb is almost as valuable as it ever was, and with the focus on big man rebounding lower than in the olden days, guard reb can do even more to neutralize a disadvantage down low when you find yourself having to sacrifice there.

long story short - there is no substitute for good team building, which is the most important and challenging part of the game, generally speaking - but for sure, rebounding at the 1-3 helps majorly.


2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

the impact of +/- on rebounding is substantial to be sure, cheating to a -2 base setup is totally appropriate in a good variety of 'right circumstances', and occasionally even more severe (as a base setup, against a team taking an avg amount of 3s). especially when you aren't so much a title seeking team as someone trying to do solidly for a couple early rebuilding years, where you are ok if you occasionally get lit up from 3s and lose a game you shouldn't.

Posted by cubcub113 on 8/27/2020 10:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jptrainwreck on 8/27/2020 1:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/27/2020 12:54:00 PM (view original):
there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Gil- thanks for presenting this. This formula is a great was to assess if your team has a rebounding problem. Given we have limited rosters, what are the controllables for a coach who identifies a problem mid season?

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)
2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

Thanks

Also interested to hear Gil answer but I will take a shot:

First up, Gil understands the sim engine and ratings far beyond me, but I've ran a lot of math on it. Rebounding is about 1.2 times as important as guard ballhandling and .27 as times as important as offense/defense splits in a motion/man. So crudely, you can estimate the game is:

33.3% defense (weighted towards the players guarding those with more distro)
33.3% offense (weighted towards players who take more shots)
18.4% rebounding (weighted towards 4-5 and away from 1-2)
15.0% ball handling (weighted heavily towards PG and secondary towards SG/SF)

in a motion man. And then how you determine a players offensive/defensive skill depends on set, 3pt setting, etc.

Everything in this game is a tradeoff. If you're a bad rebounding team, you still don't want to accept a tradeoff to slightly improve your rebounding and hurting your offense/defense a moderate amount. 70 Spd 40 Reb is better than 40 spd 50 reb at the 3 in literally any situation with any combinations of players around them and any other combination of ratings on that player.

First up, "Reb" stats do NOT correctly represent the true contribution to the team rebounding formula by players. Individual reb stats are pretty much window dressing.

1) yeh SF rebounding is very nice, but IMO people tend to overrate it and underrate guard rebounding. people seem to think SF rebounding is a primary core and rebounding at the 2 is meaningless. 30 reb at the 2 50 reb at the 3 should generate better results than 1 reb at the 2 and 60 reb by far.

2) 4 and 5 have the same rebounding influence in man press and 3-2 right? But moving someone with good REB from 4 to 3 or 3 to 2 definitely decreases their influence.

8.2.0

good post! two quick things -
#1 - yeah for sure - the 30 reb 2 and 50 reb 3 is so clearly better than 1 reb 2 and 60 reb at the 3, its not even close. also i totally agree on the individual rebounding stats being **** (i am probably the prime pusher of that theory, which is more fact than theory). rebounding is tricky to decode, you really have to focus on team rebounding % to have any chance of getting that good 'feel' for it.

#2 - i don't know, i don't know the 4 and the 5 are the same anywhere. i have never truly convinced myself either way, in the early days i thought the 5 mattered more, but i later realized this was all based off of misleading individual stats and i couldn't really be sure i'd seen anything. i roughly assume reb matters like 10% more when i game plan and with no discount in recruiting (i really heavily value big man reb at most spots), because i figure that position cannot be meaningfully wrong and even if i'm wrong, it feels fairly harmless (so sometimes i play the 4/5 backwards when i'm essentially breaking a tie, where i strongly believe the differences between 4/5 on all fronts are minor and its one of the most arbitrary decisions to start with).

also, the 2-3 vs 3-2 has zero impact on the rebounding equations used for players. for sure - the 3-2 is an atrocious rebounding scheme - but this has nothing to do with the relative value of the players changing from a 2-3 to 3-2 or probably even a m2m or press for that matter. the whole team just gets smacked similar to playing a +2 vs a -2. there may be small differences in value of guards vs bigs etc, in zone vs press or whatever - i've never seen it, and i sort of doubt there's programming for it - but its possible (without question, there are team-level rebounding differences in these sets, but i think its just all a team level modifier, not something that shifts importance from one set of players to another). for what its worth, the game does not treat short and long rebounds any differently - not that its related - but its sort of a... on par-ish example of something they don't account for.

Posted by cubcub113 on 8/27/2020 10:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jptrainwreck on 8/27/2020 1:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/27/2020 12:54:00 PM (view original):
there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Gil- thanks for presenting this. This formula is a great was to assess if your team has a rebounding problem. Given we have limited rosters, what are the controllables for a coach who identifies a problem mid season?

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)
2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

Thanks

Also interested to hear Gil answer but I will take a shot:

First up, Gil understands the sim engine and ratings far beyond me, but I've ran a lot of math on it. Rebounding is about 1.2 times as important as guard ballhandling and .27 as times as important as offense/defense splits in a motion/man. So crudely, you can estimate the game is:

33.3% defense (weighted towards the players guarding those with more distro)
33.3% offense (weighted towards players who take more shots)
18.4% rebounding (weighted towards 4-5 and away from 1-2)
15.0% ball handling (weighted heavily towards PG and secondary towards SG/SF)

in a motion man. And then how you determine a players offensive/defensive skill depends on set, 3pt setting, etc.

Everything in this game is a tradeoff. If you're a bad rebounding team, you still don't want to accept a tradeoff to slightly improve your rebounding and hurting your offense/defense a moderate amount. 70 Spd 40 Reb is better than 40 spd 50 reb at the 3 in literally any situation with any combinations of players around them and any other combination of ratings on that player.

First up, "Reb" stats do NOT correctly represent the true contribution to the team rebounding formula by players. Individual reb stats are pretty much window dressing.

1) yeh SF rebounding is very nice, but IMO people tend to overrate it and underrate guard rebounding. people seem to think SF rebounding is a primary core and rebounding at the 2 is meaningless. 30 reb at the 2 50 reb at the 3 should generate better results than 1 reb at the 2 and 60 reb by far.

2) 4 and 5 have the same rebounding influence in man press and 3-2 right? But moving someone with good REB from 4 to 3 or 3 to 2 definitely decreases their influence.

8.2.0

Our estimates are similar but I found it easier to make Offense and Defense add up to 50% since rebounding and ballhandling are really subcategories.

So, partially using your spreadsheet I ended up with something like:

27.5% shooting
37.5% FG defense
18.75% rebounding -- weighted 2:1 toward defensive rebounding
16.25 ballhandling

So Off = 27.5% shooting + 6.25% offensive rebounding + 16.25 % bh = 50%

Def = 37.5% fg prevention + 12.5% defensive rebounding = 50%

PS Ascribing responsibility for the above between the five positions is tricky because no matter how you do it some of the numbers end up looking REALLY funky.

Other things being equal when I'm recruiting big men, of course I'll go after the player with higher REB.

But other things are never equal. In bigs, I value ATH and DEF both ahead of REB. I'll give up 20 points in REB if the trade-off means that I get 20 more points spread between ATH and DEF. Except at high level D1 it's hard to find players with no weaknesses, so REB is one of the categories where I'm willing to settle for slightly lower numbers. And if I can trade 10 LP and 10 REB in exchange for 10 ATH and 10 DEF, I'll take that deal all day.

By the way, I have not done any formal analysis to come to any conclusions about whether my approach is optimal - it's just the way I happen to choose my recruits and build my teams.

Posted by marl_karx on 8/28/2020 9:45:00 AM (view original):

Posted by cubcub113 on 8/27/2020 10:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jptrainwreck on 8/27/2020 1:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/27/2020 12:54:00 PM (view original):
there is real value to it. rebounding at the 4/5 is very important in all sets. you can build competitive teams with a deficit there and strengths otherwise, but definitely 1) rebounding is very important and 2) over the course of a season or significant series, rebounding results follow the ratings.

couple notes - rebounding is mostly about the rebounding rating. more than just about anything in this game, you just need to focus on the rebounding. ath matters a good bit and iq / fatigue are factors but rebounding is the giant. to me, its the top priority for my bigs as a unit and as individuals, although obviously sometimes exceptions are needed (to get a scorer, or whatever). i used to like to say, if your team can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do anything else, either - because it is that important. but the game has changed since then, big man offense is no longer horrible, which makes big man defense matter a lot more, too. but overall, rebounding is the #1 thing for big men.

second, do not evaluate rebounding in a game by total rebounds. doing so is a substantial and concrete mistake that directly leads to the observation you have (that rebounding is a crap shoot). total rebounds is a highly misleading and largely useless figure. instead, do the simple math to get the % of rebounds gotten by each team on the defense end (which implies the offensive end for the other team - if you got 70% of def board opportunities, they got 30% of offensive board opportunities - so you can really use either one. as long as you are going on %, not totals). the reason for this, you already mentioned - a team with more misses has more defensive rebounding opportunities and even garbage **** teams are going to get the majority of their defensive rebound opportunities.

example in case the above is unclear. i pulled the first game from the team someone linked above:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=18550659&tab=boxscore

in there, the winning team won by 50, big blowout. rebounders for the winner were 20 off and 52 total (32 def). the loser had 13 off and 43 total (30 def).

to do the math, the winner got 32/(32+13) = 32/45 = 71.1% of defensive rebounding opportunities
the loser got 30 / (30 + 20) = 30 / 50 = 60% of the defensive rebounding opportunities.

11.1% gap is a large, healthy gap that a team with a big advantage would generally be happy with. who actually got what opportunities is based on things mostly not related to rebounding. there are many games where i've had fewer total rebounds but a better def reb % and that gave me solace. i have been using this simple formula since my first year and would never go back. in theory, a defensive rebounding opportunity can result in something other than a rebound - and i think this happens in HD (but can't swear to it off hand) - namely, a foul. so this simple math isn't 100% accurate but its pretty damn close, and you can do it in about 15 seconds per game that you care to know the real reb outcome for, and that has always been good enough for me.

Gil- thanks for presenting this. This formula is a great was to assess if your team has a rebounding problem. Given we have limited rosters, what are the controllables for a coach who identifies a problem mid season?

1) does adding another rebounder at the SF spot help signifigantly? (is the rebounding formula the simple sum of all the rebounding totals of players on the floor, or is it weighted by position?)
2) does moving to a more negative position have a major impact?

Thanks

Also interested to hear Gil answer but I will take a shot:

First up, Gil understands the sim engine and ratings far beyond me, but I've ran a lot of math on it. Rebounding is about 1.2 times as important as guard ballhandling and .27 as times as important as offense/defense splits in a motion/man. So crudely, you can estimate the game is:

33.3% defense (weighted towards the players guarding those with more distro)
33.3% offense (weighted towards players who take more shots)
18.4% rebounding (weighted towards 4-5 and away from 1-2)
15.0% ball handling (weighted heavily towards PG and secondary towards SG/SF)

in a motion man. And then how you determine a players offensive/defensive skill depends on set, 3pt setting, etc.

Everything in this game is a tradeoff. If you're a bad rebounding team, you still don't want to accept a tradeoff to slightly improve your rebounding and hurting your offense/defense a moderate amount. 70 Spd 40 Reb is better than 40 spd 50 reb at the 3 in literally any situation with any combinations of players around them and any other combination of ratings on that player.

First up, "Reb" stats do NOT correctly represent the true contribution to the team rebounding formula by players. Individual reb stats are pretty much window dressing.

1) yeh SF rebounding is very nice, but IMO people tend to overrate it and underrate guard rebounding. people seem to think SF rebounding is a primary core and rebounding at the 2 is meaningless. 30 reb at the 2 50 reb at the 3 should generate better results than 1 reb at the 2 and 60 reb by far.

2) 4 and 5 have the same rebounding influence in man press and 3-2 right? But moving someone with good REB from 4 to 3 or 3 to 2 definitely decreases their influence.

8.2.0

Our estimates are similar but I found it easier to make Offense and Defense add up to 50% since rebounding and ballhandling are really subcategories.

So, partially using your spreadsheet I ended up with something like:

27.5% shooting
37.5% FG defense
18.75% rebounding -- weighted 2:1 toward defensive rebounding
16.25 ballhandling

So Off = 27.5% shooting + 6.25% offensive rebounding + 16.25 % bh = 50%

Def = 37.5% fg prevention + 12.5% defensive rebounding = 50%

PS Ascribing responsibility for the above between the five positions is tricky because no matter how you do it some of the numbers end up looking REALLY funky.

Its tricky because when evaluating players I use defense as more valuable as offense (because a **** offensive player you can just not give distro but a **** defensive player will be ruthlessly attacked) but I think they're pretty similar value when looking at team as a whole, just weighted in different ways.

Yeah, that is one of the trickiest parts. Also, there is the problem that the 5 positions are (probably?) not equal, which would be a nice simplifying assumption to be able to make.

Ath has a lot to do with it. My Lehman press team I'm the lowest ranking rebounding team in the conference but lead the conference in rebounds and 21st in the nation.