Is the Thunder's rebounding issue a fatal flaw?
OKC is a bottom-three rebounding team on both sides of the ball
On Saturday night, the Thunder gave up an astronomical 31 rebounds to Jusuf Nurkic and were out-rebounded 50-41 overall. Nevertheless, they beat the Suns 118-110. The very next day, OKC was out-rebounded 55-38 by the Lakers, and lost the game 116-104.
There has been a lot of consternation about this specific issue throughout the season, and it reached a fever pitch this weekend. Specifically, OKC’s decision not to trade for a center at the deadline is something people are zeroing in on. Because when you’re getting out-rebounded, the solution is typically to go to a bigger lineup. But the Thunder don’t do that.
They don’t do that because it’s antithetical to their identity as a team, and they are willing to accept the trade-off of their poor rebounding for all the benefits they get out of playing the way they do.
In between those two aforementioned games, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault laid it out exactly that way. Here’s what Daigneault said, via Joel Lorenzi of The Oklahoman.
"A lot of nights we lose the rebounding battle. And as long as the benefit continues to outweigh the cost, we're going to continue to accept the trade offs. We're not going to be a perfect team.
"At the end of the day, there's more to the game than just rebounding. ... If we try to solve every problem, then we're gonna be trying to chase our shadow."
Basically, OKC knows it has a rebounding problem. The Thunder are just fine with that because they think they can make up for that deficiency elsewhere.
But there are plenty of people who think you simply can’t win big while being this big at rebounding, so I decided to look into that. The Thunder’s current defensive rebound rate1 of 72.4% is second-worst in the NBA, ahead of only the Wizards, who barely count as an NBA team.
But it’s not unheard for a team with a defensive rebound rate that low to make the Finals — or even to win it. Of the eight teams this century who made the Finals while grabbing 72.5% or less of available defensive rebounds during the regular season, four of them won. Interestingly, the last team to get to the Finals while sitting in that bucket was… the 2011-12 Thunder.
(If you’re reading this via email, click the table to see the full version.)
Because offensive rebound rates leaguewide have fluctuated over time, though, it’s probably better to look at where each of these teams ranked in defensive rebound rate that season.
The chart below shows the defensive rebound rate ranking for the teams that won and lost the Finals in each year this century, as well as the moving average from year to year.
It’s worth noting that the better defensive-rebounding team is 11-12 in the Finals this century, and that teams ranked in the bottom-10 are 3-3. (Teams in the top-10 are 14-11, by comparison.) Of course, that’s just rebounding. And defensive rebounding, at that. We can also take a look at the other four factors, and on both sides of the ball.
The next chart I’m going to show you might look confusing for a second, but bear with me. And keep in mind that cells shaded in green signify a top-5 leaguewide ranking, blue signifies top-10, yellow signifies bottom-10, and orange signifies bottom-5.
A few things from this table stand out to me:
The one bottom-five defensive rebounding team that made the Finals during this stretch, ended up winning. That team was the 2017 Warriors. You might recognize that as the first year they had Kevin Durant.
The overwhelmingly most common trait among Finals teams this century is that they are elite at shooting. Of the 46 teams above, 33 ranked in the top five in effective field goal percentage and four more ranked in the top 10. That’s 80% of Finals teams. OKC checks that box.
The next most-common trait is elite shooting defense. 23 of the 46 teams ranked in the top five and another 13 ranked in the top 10. That’s 78% of Finals teams. Again, OKC checks that box.
Those two stats and opponent free-throw rate are the only ones where zero teams ranked in the bottom five made the Finals. The Thunder are bottom-10 in opponent free-throw rate, but six previous teams have gotten to the Finals despite that, including the Warriors twice in the last five years.
Nine bottom-five offensive rebounding teams have made the Finals, as have another six in the bottom 10. (It’s seven top-five offensive rebounding teams and another six top-10 teams.) Those teams are a combined 7-8 in the Finals. OKC fits in this group.
The six bottom-10 defensive rebounding teams to make the Finals, meanwhile, are 3-3 in those series. OKC also fits in this group.
OKC would be the first team during this era to make the Finals as a bottom-five rebounding team on both sides of the ball, but there are three other teams that have been in the bottom-five of multiple categories. Those teams are the 2010 Celtics, the 2014 Heat, and the 2018 Cavaliers — all of whom lost the series.
The teams with merely ONE bottom-five ranking in any category went 12-7 in the Finals and the teams with two or more bottom-10 rankings went 6-6. One of those wins came from last year’s Nuggets, who finished bottom-10 in both turnover rate and free-throw rate on offense.
Basically, it’s not necessarily fatal to have a significant weakness like OKC does in the rebounding department. It’s obviously entirely possible that OKC will run into a team that exploits its rebounding deficiency and knocks the Thunder out. But the fact their deficiency is rebounding specifically doesn’t seem to be disqualifying: the bad rebounding teams that made the Finals went 10-11.
No team has yet won the Finals with that specific weakness on both sides of the ball, but given how many teams have gotten to and won the title with two-way weaknesses, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that definitively dooms the Thunder. In other words, the Thunder have a weakness, and it makes them vulnerable. But that just makes them like any other contender in the league.
Defensive rebound rate is more indicative of rebounding ability than is offensive rebound rate, because there are some teams that simply de-prioritize the latter in favor of getting back in transition defense. But there are generally not teams that similarly de-prioritize defensive rebounding to get out on the break; you need to actually get the defensive rebound in order to run.