This is great! http://grantland.com/features/how-rebounds-work/ ... Welcome to the NBA’s surveillance age. Because of advanced tracking cameras and the data they provide, we know which NBA players run the fastest, which pass the most, and how much they dribble and where. 2014-15 NBA Preview Everything you need to know about the coming season.Those fancy cameras, hidden in the rafters of NBA arenas, are tracking more than just players. They’re also capturing the precise position of the basketball, 24 times per second. The NBA’s SportVU system was originally intended to promote strategic analytics among the teams, but the data set has a lot more to say, and a lot more to contribute, than just newfangled scouting reports. .... The league’s tracking system not only logs locations for every missed shot, it also charts the locations of their subsequent rebounds. In turn, we can map out the spatial relationships between shot locations and rebound locations with unprecedented depth and clarity. We can uncover the fundamental facts about rebounding that until very recently have been impossible to get to. [There's an incredible graphic set here showing the location of every rebound from shots taken at different points on the court.] ------------ I wish this was my job. A lot of this is common sense and like the article says, rebounders who spend hours on the court inevitably get a good feel for this stuff. Still, I find it interesting that the data is available to people now for better analysis. It's unlikely that this particular data will be used as a teaching tool for rebounding because most of what it says is just confirmation of how rebounders already try to position themselves.
Great stuff. Kirk Goldsberry has been doing a better job with his Grantland articles than Zach Lowe has.
I wouldn't necessarily say better job, but his subject matter is more up my alley - I'm a number cruncher and that's what he does. He doesn't give me new basketball insight, but he provides the tools for new data to be used/interpreted by the lay-person
I agree that Goldsberry's writing is more on the numbers side (which I like) but it gives you something to ponder about because, hey, those are the numbers. Lowe was great when he broke down game tape but it's been hard (for me at least) to call his analysis since the playoffs started any great.
You might be right, because i can't remember the last Lowe work I read or watched recently. back tot he article though; for me, the value of this work is pretty much summarised in the last two paragraphs: [rquoter]Much has been made about the player-tracking revolution in the NBA and how it will advance the state of basketball analytics. This is truly a brave new world; to date, a vast majority of the energy spent researching advancements has been aimed at developing richer characterizations of player performance and constructing newfangled scouting reports. That makes sense, but basketball is bigger than any one player or team, and it’s also important to realize that the same data set that tells us Chandler Parsons and Jimmy Butler ran a lot, or Patty Mills runs the fastest, also holds incredible information about how basketball works. This goes beyond properly evaluating individuals; we are on our way to being able to map basketball itself. This work will eventually help coaches, players, and press more elegantly understand ball movement, defensive positioning, offensive architecture, and, yes, rebounding. Rebounds, with their reliable uncertainty, are part of what makes basketball beautiful. There are general rules that dictate the nature of missed shots. But thanks to the perfect design of the basketball hoop, there will always be randomness. No matter how good our cameras get, there are still things that only Jo knows.[/rquoter]
The best guy that I've seen tracking down rebounds has to be Dennis Rodman. He just had that innate ability to know where that rebound was going to be.
I hope one day they give us a glance on what I call "true rebounding" stats, in which a player may or may not grab the ball himself but he increases the chances of his TEAM getting the rebound. E.g. boxing out, good positioning, tipping and keeping the ball alive, etc.
As a regular joe who loves rebounding, I think most folks knew the main point, which is that rebounds are more common on the weakside and that you want to box out to get in to that weakside space a few feet from the rim. I thought it was interesting though that strongside rebounds tend to be long. When I play, I will always try to get to the close weakside position, but if I know another player who I can't just out jump is already established there (whether my team or the opposing), I'll run to the next best spot, typically the strongside close position. But after reading this, I will try taking the long strongside spot more for long shots as my secondary. I'll "reverse box out" my man to keep them nearer in and less able to jump up to snare those.
