Another pedestrian Cavs victory tonight, this time over the Deng-less, Noah-less, Rose-less Bulls.
I’ll be honest - I’m as bored of the regular season as the Cavs are. But I did notice something during this game that I want to make a point about.
Earlier this week, the website Hardwood Paroxysm posted an article about the value of assists. The basic argument of the story is that not all assists are created equal. Some are more critical to creating points than others. Additionally, the assist stat itself is a little bit bogus - a guy like LeBron can make 8 great passes to Glitch that should result in dunks and Glitch can drop 5 of them and LeBron is punished, statistically, for that when it really isn’t his fault. Ultimately then, the assist stat isn’t as indicative of a player’s performance as we might believe.
I realized tonight that a very similar thing could be said about rebounding.
For instance, there was one play tonight where the Bulls took a shot and immediately ran back for transition D. This left Andy, Delonte, and Leon standing underneath the basket completely alone. Andy grabbed the ball.
Now, I would argue that this rebound - which clearly the Cavs were going to get - should not be valued as much as one that Andy cuts through three members of the opposing team and dives across court to snag.
But when we talk about things like Rebounding Percentage, Rebounds Per Minute, and even advanced box score metrics like PER and WP48, that kind of specification doesn’t show up - the first rebound is just as valuable as the second.
And I don’t think that’s accurate.
SUNDAY. CAVS v PISTONS. Get psyched? Umm…
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