NBA Trends, Part II: The Rise of Offensive Rebounding

Lakers’ playoff death sentence and Mavericks’ past strategic oversight

Photo by Harry How / Getty Images

This is the second part of the NBA Trends series, where I take a closer look at key storylines from this year’s playoffs and the broader NBA landscape to see if we are witnessing any real strategic shifts.

As always, I will add Lakers and Mavericks context by examining where they stand in all of this and how these trends could influence their team-building decisions. For this series, I have parsed the last 20 years of game logs, covering more than 50,000 regular season and playoff records, including box score, advanced, and four factor data. I also went through the last 12 seasons of available tracking data.

In Part I, I explored how the NBA is entering a new era of speed, athleticism, and aggressiveness, and how that has made the game more physically demanding than ever. Today’s trend is a natural continuation of that, with the rise of offensive rebounding tied directly to an increase in size, physicality, and athleticism.

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Today’s highlights:

1. The steady return of offensive rebounding 📈

2. Playoffs: rebounding as a weapon to punish smaller teams and mismatches

3. Offensive rebounding as a strategic priority and advantage 📈

4. Adapting or staying behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks following the trend? 📈

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1-The steady return of offensive rebounding 📈

After years of teams taking a more conservative approach to crashing the offensive glass and prioritizing transition defense, there has been a clear shift. Following nearly a decade of decline in offensive rebounding rates between 2010 and 2020, the numbers have steadily climbed in recent seasons. This year, the offensive rebounding rate reached its highest mark in the past ten years. It is not a brand-new trend. A lot has already been written about why offensive rebounding has come back in style, and I will revisit some of that strategic thinking in later sections.

Still, even if it is not new, this year’s playoffs have highlighted the shift in a big way.

The increase has not only been visible compared to prior postseasons, but also shows a notable jump from regular season levels.

2-Playoffs: rebounding as a weapon to punish smaller teams and mismatches

I already mentioned the noticeable jump in offensive rebounding rates from the regular season to the playoffs, as shown in the earlier chart. While this spike has been heavily influenced by a few first-round matchups and could regress slightly as the playoffs progress, the trend is hard to ignore. Watching those same series, it is clear that size and the ability to punish smaller lineups by relentlessly attacking the offensive glass have played a major role in shaping playoff outcomes.

I have written a lot about the Lakers’ struggles against the Wolves and how exhausting the uphill battle became as they played small and relied on a very short rotation. The bigger front line of Rudy Gobert, Julius Randle, and Jaden McDaniels dominated the offensive glass, and rebounding became a bigger issue with each game of the series. It culminated in the Game 5 collapse, where Gobert scored 27 points and grabbed 24 rebounds, including 9 on the offensive end. The Lakers finished their 2025 playoff run as the worst defensive rebounding team among all 16 postseason teams, and they did so by a significant margin.

Source: NBA stats dot com

Houston vs. Golden State was another first-round series where Ime Udoka tried to punish the smaller Warriors by frequently playing huge lineups. He often paired two centers, Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams, alongside additional length with forwards Jabari Smith Jr. and Tari Eason. In the end, Steph Curry and the Warriors survived that seven-game rock fight, but the banging took its toll. Like the Lakers, the Warriors faced similar challenges trying to keep the bigger Timberwolves off the offensive glass. Without Curry, they lost the series in five games and finished the playoffs as the third-worst defensive rebounding team.

Celtics vs. Knicks is another interesting series to watch from a rebounding perspective, especially given the effort and focus Joe Mazzulla has put into trying to play Mitchell Robinson off the floor. The Knicks have posted an exceptionally high 37 percent offensive rebounding rate with Robinson on the floor during the playoffs, while the Rockets reached an even higher 42 percent rate with Adams. It is no surprise that both players became targets of hack-a-big and intentional fouling tactics aimed at neutralizing that advantage.

Robinson and Adams lead the playoffs in fgOR% (the percentage of their team’s missed field goals that they personally rebounded), with 7-foot-4 rookie Zach Edey ranking fourth. All three are clear signs of the return of the big, physical, pound-the-glass center — a player type that looked nearly extinct at the height of the 5-out, spread-the-floor era.

3-Offensive rebounding as a strategic priority and advantage 📈

The shift toward attacking the offensive glass is not just a tactical adjustment we are seeing in this year’s playoffs. As I mentioned earlier, the trend is not new. For some teams, it has become a clear strategic priority and even an analytical edge aimed at winning the possession game. Teams like the Raptors, Grizzlies, and most recently the Rockets have embraced offensive rebounding as a core part of their identity and team-building approach.

It is not just the return of traditional bigs like Adams, Robinson, or Edey driving the resurgence. Teams in general are sending more players to attack the offensive glass.

The Lakers’ inability to keep the Timberwolves off the glass was one of the decisive factors in their series, and it was not something rookie head coach J.J. Redick likely envisioned when he took over last June. In fact, at his introductory press conference, Redick spoke about the same trend of teams sending more players to crash the glass and creating margins by generating extra possessions.

The team was 29th in offensive rebounding percentage. If you look at the trends of the NBA right now, teams that really value possessions are sending guys from the corner. They’re not worried about getting three guys back...You create a margin there. That all came from just analyzing the game over the last three years. — J.J. Redick

There are two other reasons why I believe having an edge in offensive rebounding translates well to the playoffs. First, the pace drops significantly in the postseason, which leads to more half-court possessions and, in turn, more opportunities to attack the offensive glass.

Second, shooting efficiency tends to drop in the postseason due to the more physical play allowed, as well as the increased preparation and attention to detail from opposing defenses. With the rise in physicality, which I covered in the first part of this series, this season marked the first time we have seen overall effective field goal percentage decline after years of steady growth.

4-Adapting or staying behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks following the trend? 📈

Redick noted that the Lakers finished 29th, or second worst, in offensive rebounding during the 2023–24 season. Despite his focus on the issue, they still ended up in the bottom third of the league this season, ranking 23rd. The team went through a major transformation midseason and gave up size by swapping Anthony Davis for Luka Dončić. However, they were actually worse before the trade, ranking 25th in offensive rebounding. In fact, the Lakers have ranked in the bottom ten in offensive rebounding in each of the last four seasons.

The Mavericks have been even less committed to crashing the offensive glass than the Lakers. Aside from two exceptions in 2018–19 and 2019–20, when they finished 12th and 15th, they have consistently ranked in the bottom ten and often in the bottom five in offensive rebounding for more than 15 years.

This season was an anomaly, with injuries forcing the Mavericks to play small lineups without a true center for a large portion of the games after the trade deadline. Dallas hit the jackpot by winning the lottery, and with Cooper Flagg in the mix, they should be one of the biggest and longest teams in the NBA next season. Flagg is exactly the type of athlete and body that should thrive in today’s game. Both he and his fellow Duke freak athlete Dereck Lively, along with the size and length the Mavericks have accumulated, should give the team a major boost in their hopes of reversing the trend and building an edge on the glass and in the possession game overall.

For the Lakers, the path to that remains murky. It is obvious they need to find athletes to complement Dončić, but it remains to be seen to what extent they can address this need already this summer given their limited assets. Another question is whether Redick, in his second year, recommits to hustle players like Jarred Vanderbilt, who will finally have a full offseason to work on his game after persistent injuries and rehab limited his previous summers, and Jordan Goodwin. Both are a near guarantee for extra possessions, but Redick lost trust in them during the playoffs because of their limitations on the offensive end.

It will be an interesting summer and season ahead for both teams as we watch how they transform and how much they prioritize this clear and growing trend in today’s NBA.