SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors’ tallest player is the 6-foot-10 Dario Saric. Their best rebounder, Kevon Looney, grew up as a point guard and couldn’t hop a curb. Their defensive maestro, Draymond Green, has hardly played.
Yet the Warriors, more than a third through the season, are the best rebounding team in the NBA.
Golden State ranks first in rebounds per game at 47.4. They average 13.2 offensive boards per game, tied for first. Their 52.4% rebounding rate — an advanced metric measuring the percent of available rebounds a team grabbed — is a hair behind New York’s league-leading 52.5% mark.
So far at least this season, the Warriors have proven one thing: when it comes to rebounding, size isn’t everything.
“It’s something that in training camp, we really focused on — being a great rebounding team and crashing the glass as much as possible,” Looney, the starting center, said this week. “We’ve got such great shooters, giving them extra possessions is going to make us that much more dangerous. We had success with that in the playoffs, so we wanted to carry that over to the regular season.”
The Warriors have scored 16 second-chance points per game, tied for fourth in the league. Head coach Steve Kerr said rebounding was a training camp emphasis and the coaching staff was confident the roster could improve in that area.
Golden State ranked eighth in total rebounding last year, a solid if not spectacular mark. For the difference from last season to this one, look no further than Brandin Podziemski, the rookie who has launched himself into the starting lineup — in part by launching himself toward the rim off misses.
Podziemski averages 1.6 rebounds per game, behind only Looney and Saric on the team. The 6-foot-5 guard has cemented himself in the Warriors’ rotation by exhibiting hustle and basketball I.Q. beyond his years. That shows up in when he decides to go for offensive rebounds and how much energy to exert once committing.
Among players shorter than 6-foot-7, Podziemski’s offensive rebounding ranks tied for fifth in the NBA. Moses Moody and Gary Payton II also rank in the top 25.
Teams that emphasize offensive rebounding typically need to strike a balance. If too many players crash the boards and don’t come down with the offensive rebound, they could be liable on the other end in transition.
“I think for many years, as the league changed and became a little more about pace and space, explosive scoring and skill level and early opportunities — it could be in transition or just early opportunities to attack,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I think most teams and coaching staffs were prioritizing getting back on defense and set. And then in the last handful of years, I think some teams are trying to maximize more possessions potentially on the glass. And finding what that balance is, because that skill level and that pace and space hasn’t changed. If you’re not trying to maximize that, you’re getting eviscerated in transition.”
The Warriors have been aggressive on the offensive glass, but they aren’t getting burned. They rank 22nd in opponent fast break points; that includes teams turning turnovers and long rebounds into fast breaks, so it isn’t completely correlated to overextending on the offensive boards.
“Coach just continues to tell us constantly to crash — it’s either crash or get back,” rookie center Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “He (allows) guards to crash — you see BP in there all the time getting rebounds. Guards crashing is huge for us.”
As they hover around .500, the Dubs’ rebounding prowess hasn’t necessarily led to success. In fact, the Celtics are the only team in the top five of total rebounding who is a clear-cut contender. Even though the league’s best players — Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo are centers — the game has shifted toward 3-pointers and pace.
Has that diminished the importance of rebounding? It all comes back to finding the right balance between crashing and retreating.
“I don’t think anybody has that answer yet,” Spoelstra said. “The analytics, I’m sure, are trying to come up with definitive theories on that. It’s different when you’re out there, the score board matters for the team in a way it doesn’t necessarily matter for the analytics department.”
