Paul George, “Playing Up” and Rebounding.
By Seth Partnow
Paul George made some news yesterday by going on record with his lack of enthusiasm for the Pacers’ plan to play him at power forward this coming season. While the public nature of his displeasure may have been a surprise, the fact of it shouldn’t be. “Playing up” isn’t a whole lot of fun, as recent vintage “small ball” 4’s like Shane Battier and Jared Dudley have discussed repeatedly[1. Battier spoke extensively on the topic during his recent appearance on Zach Lowe’s podcast.].
A common argument in favor of going small at the four is “how many big bruising power forwards are there left anyway?” It’s true, get past the dinosaurs[2. In terms of both age and play style.] like Z-Bo and Nene, and who else is out there who will try to bury a smaller defender under the rim on the catch and then power up over and through him for a bucket? As I talked about yesterday, not every big man will be able to take advantage of being guarded by a “smaller” player, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. And dealing with those attempts takes exhausting effort.
Plus, the threat of the post up might not be the main issue. Over the summer, Stan van Gundy[2. Also on Lowe’s podcast.] offered the opinion that crashing the offensive boards would be in many cases a more effective method of punishing smallball than re-arranging an entire offense to seek out “mismatches.” Hunting the mismatch all too often[2. See e.g. 2013/14 Golden State Warriors.] turns into inefficient and time consuming isolation post-ups.
Encouraging offensive rebounds over iso-posts makes immediate sense – in the taxonomy of offensive playtypes provided on NBA.com by Synergy Sports, post ups are one of the least efficient scoring methods[4. 0.85 points per play.], while putback attempts were behind only to fast break opportunities and cuts to the rim in terms of points per play[5. 1.08 points per play.].
The need to battle for rebounds, especially defensive rebounds is one of the bigger adjustments faced by a player moving from small forward to power forward. I’ve previously defined “Rebound Chase %” as the proportion of rebounds a player contests[4. Per the public SportVU definition of being within 3.5 feet of the ball when the rebound is secured.] relative to the opportunities which arise while he is on the floor[5. The better floor time data which allowed for positional playing time estimates also improved the accuracy of rebound chance counts for each player.]. The following chart shows Offensive Rebound Chase% by a player’s average position played in 2014/15:
As you can see, the “bigger” a player, the more frequently they crash the offensive glass. Much like rim protection, this effect is a combination of size and general proximity to the hoop. To illustrate the positional difference more starkly, considering the following rough averages:
While Chase% is a somewhat rough proxy for rebounding activity[7. If a player “goes to the boards” in a way we would recognize as such watching the game, but doesn’t get near the ball due to the randomness of the bounce of the ball off the rim, it wouldn’t be recorded as a rebounding “chance.”], it’s still remarkable that PF’s attack the offensive glass at nearly double the rate of SF’s. In more practical terms, that means George is going to have to bang bodies to prevent giving up free offensive rebounds[8. Contested rebounds where players from both teams are in the vicinity are “won” by the offense around 51% of the time on missed field goals, while “uncontested” rebound chances are obviously secured 100% of the time.] around twice as often. And he’s going to be doing so against players who are bigger and stronger than he would be were he still guarding small forwards. Over the course of a game or season, that’s a lot of extra weight to have to try and push around.
None of this is to say George can’t do it, or that whatever edges Indiana’s foes might realize in the post and on the glass won’t be made up for, and more, by the gains of George providing shooting, ball-handling and playmaking offensively. But you can start to see why he might not think it sounds like a lot of fun.
Incidental to this piece, we’ve added “rebounding chase” stats for every player from 2014/15 to the Our Stats section here. Check it out.