October 15, 2014

"How Rebounds Work": stat-porn from Grantland.

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.

posted by yerfatma to basketball at 03:42 PM - 4 comments

I want to bathe in the data.

posted by grum@work at 04:08 PM on October 15, 2014

Is there a system for tracking Dennis Rodman's off-court spatial relationships and rebound locations?

posted by beaverboard at 04:23 PM on October 15, 2014

Rebounds work through the combination of Newton's law (a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force.), the force of gravity (Newton again), and the coefficient of restitution of the basketball. Someone with a high mathematics and physics IQ could probably predict in general terms where the rebounds of shots from certain positions will go. Of course, it's a lot easier to use data accumulated over a number of trials. I'm being a bit facetious with the above, but the best rebounders have long had the game sense to position themselves in the most advantageous position. The smaller players, particularly guards, seem to be better at this than many of the "bigs".

posted by Howard_T at 10:10 PM on October 15, 2014

Is there a system for tracking Dennis Rodman's off-court spatial relationships and rebound locations?

There is, but the map goes dark over North Korea.

posted by owlhouse at 11:06 PM on October 15, 2014

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