The last one of these boys that we published came out just before Ja Morant returned from his hamstring injury. In his absence, the Memphis Grizzlies had recalibrated into the most suffocating defensive team in the entire NBA. The question was: could the Grizz maintain those standards when their best offensive player returned with his admittedly sketchy defence?

I mean, this just happened so there’s a clue for ya...

Morant’s return was a bit of a boilover as the Grizz lost to a Thunder team that they’d beaten by 72 points a few weeks earlier (granted Josh Giddey and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander actually played this time... makes a bit of a difference). Then they got popped by the sizzlingly good Golden State Warriors next up. But since then they’ve won five on the trot including wins over the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, and Brooklyn Nets.

Ja Morant scored 30+ in four of those games. Even his three point shot is dropping. The team is still chilling up near the top of most of those same defensive categories across that span (dropping a bit in a few of them but remember they played a couple of genuine contenders across this stretch) and are well entrenched in the fourth seed in the West looking more likely to move up than down the way they’re tracking. Life is good.

There’ll be ups and downs along the way. Some of those stat trends will probably come out in the wash, but whatever it was that suddenly clicked while Morant was out has been maintained since he came back. The spark still burns. The Grizzlies are good. Perhaps even good enough that Steven Adams will get to play a second-round playoff series for the first time since 2015-16.

So that’s all that out of the way then. Don’t need to go deep on these team trends when they haven’t really changed since they were written about in Kiwi Steve #4. Just enjoy what the Grizzlies are doing for now and watch them rack up the wins. Because today we’re talking specifically about offensive rebounds.

Steven Adams, Undercover Hero

That’s such an incredible line from Memphis assistant coach Brad Jones. First of all it’s a member of the Memphis staff throwing some huge value behind Adams’ name which is what we wanna hear. Then there’s that idea of being able to dominate games without scoring. Having an impactful role that doesn’t need to include doing the one thing that people normally look for when considering what it looks like to dominate a game: points.

We already knew that bit about how it took him a couple months to find his footing alongside his new teammates but to have that validated is handy. Then there’s the point about opposing coaches taking specific notice of him. In a funny way, that’s one of the highest compliments you can offer to a player. Because those coaches, they’re scouting, they’re devising game plans, they’re diving deep into the intricacies of NBA basketball and he’s so involved in that thinking that he’s getting name-dropped in those yarns. That whole idea about players like Steven Adams doing the little things that people don’t always notice? Coaches notice.

Okay then, so how does one dominate a game without scoring? It’s all about presence. It’s easy to pay attention to the guys who stand there and spot up shots. We’re always watching for shots. But which players command attention without taking shots, that’s the trick. And Steven Adams makes his presence known in all those typical ways that he’s already renowned for: offensive rebounding, heavy screens, hustle plays, high-post possessions.

All of which leads us to games like this...

This was against the reigning Western Conference champs. Great numbers against a great team helping towards a great victory. That is what a positive impact looks like. Adams was +14 in his 31 and a half minutes... in a game his team won by a single point thanks to a last second bucket. Have a look at what his frontcourt partner had to say about him after the Suns win...

Jaren Jackson Jr: “I love playing with Steve-o. Great guy too. He’s saving so many possessions by his boards, he’s having nights of 4, 5, 6 assists, he’s hitting guys on that cut, and really just finding shooters on offensive rebounds. Now I think probably what he’s doing more that he wasn’t doing earlier is he’s scoring in there now. He’s making that quick move and he’s scoring so he’s really helping balance everything out. I really appreciate everything he does, I’m, telling you.”

His ninth offensive rebound in that game was a sneaky milestone. That’s because his ninth offensive rebound took him past that pesky number eight for his season-high. He’d been trapped on eight in four previous games and one more since. Which also means six separate games with 8+ offensive rebounds... bloody hell.

Kevon Looney had a 12 O-REB game for the GS Warriors earlier in the season. Clint Capela (Atlanta) and Robert Williams III (Boston) have each gotten to double figures in a game too – Adams’ career best is 12 from a game against the Cavaliers in 2018 if you’re wondering. But here’s the thing: of the 24 instances of a guy grabbing eight or more offensive boards this season... Steven Adams has six of them. Nobody else has more than two.

What’s In An Offensive Rebound?

In his last 20 games, going back to when the Grizzlies flicked the switch, Steven Adams has averaged these fine numbers:

26.9 MIN | 7.5 PTS (57% FG, 55.6% FT) | 10.7 REB (5.0 OFF) | 3.2 AST | 0.9 STL | 1.7 PF

That, hopefully is what we can expect of him moving forward. The Grizz are 16-4 in that stretch with three separate winning streaks of at least five games. Those numbers are what he’s contributed since they turned up the heat. Lots that we could focus on in there, such as his free throw shooting finally starting to balance out or his miniscule foul rate or the increased scoring (as JJJ alluded to) or the assist rate that still somehow manages to trend upwards. But how about them offensive rebounds?

It’s enough of a hot streak that Adams has snuck ahead of Clint Capela in the NBA’s overall offensive boards per game standings. Capela was holding him off, now Adams has pushed past him. 4.3 vs 4.2 per game. Adams has played every game this season which is something that only Desmond Bane can also say within the Memphis roster and that regularity means he has more total O-boards than Capela. Plus he already had the best offensive rebound percentage, grabbing them at a better rate than the Hawks big man even though Capela’s bigger minutes had previously allowed him to get more overall... but no longer. Adams top of the pops in total, percentage and average, get in there. No arguments.

(Stats accurate prior to the MEM vs DET game because, you know, gimme a chance to write it all)

He is, put simply, the best offensive rebounder in the National Basketball Association. Which is cool, sweet as, but Steve-o would be the first to point out that the raw numbers mean little in and of themselves. So what’s the point of offensive rebounds? Free possessions is what. Every one of those boards is an extra possession with the potential for an extra shot. Even the ones he chucks straight back up there for misses that he subsequently rebounds again himself.

Thus the Memphis Grizzlies are averaging an NBA-best 17.7 second chance points per game (whilst giving up the fifth fewest at the other end). Turning misses into makes. That process might look like this...

Or perhaps this...

Or it may even assume the visual form of this...

Not to mention the ones where they simply reset their half-court offence scenarios which unfold too slowly for gif form but late in games when you’re trying to close things out those are absolutely immense in taking time off the clock and frustrating the opposition. Adams himself is 18th in the NBA in second chance points which is the leading mark for his team yet only just cracks the twenty league-wide despite his team’s overall excellence - further evidence of the variety of ways in which they get those points. Tip-ins and dunks from the big man as well as kick outs to three point shooters or quick passes to cutting runners and all that. Variety is the spice of life and it’s also the thing that makes rival coaches crack whiteboards over their knees in frustration trying to come up with answers.

Steven Adams is bagging these bad boys at an average distance from the hoop of 3.7 yards. The next three fellas on the per game list, Capela & Poeltl & Williams, are all at 5+ yards while the only other player in that same close range as Adams is the bloke he replaced for this team: Jonas Valanciunas. There’s nothing too funky in this from Adams. Nothing too complicated. When his teammates shoot he tries to get as close to the hoop as possible and then he tries to get his hands on the ball if they miss.

As a result, 79% of his offensive rebounds are contested... which is actually less than you’d expect, to be fair, not enough teams bothering to box him out despite the scouting report carnage. Plus it’s a reward for persistence and being there waiting almost every single time. Valanciunas is at 86.5% contested so maybe that’s why he’s not snatching as many of them as Adams overall.

A couple other tidbits...

• 69.9% of his OREBs come from missed two point attempts while 28.3% come from missed threes... that doesn’t add up to 100% as there are also presumably a few spare boards from free throws.

• 20.5% of his offensive rebounds are grabbed uncontested. 55.4% are contested by one opposing player. 24.1% are against two or more contesting rebounders.

• 44.6% of his OREBs are hauled in within three feet of the basket. 45.8% of them are hauled in between that 3-6 feet range. Leaving only 9.6% - slightly less than one in ten – of his O-baggers to be scooped beyond six yards from the hoop.

A few variations on the theme then. Adams is grabbing those rebounds in a multitude of ways... but the main point is the same each time: he’s working close to the hoop. He wants that ball and he puts himself in a position to win it. A particular favourite variation has got to be the Too Big Too Strong type of rebound...

But the variation that tells the best story is the pick and roll set. Adams’ screens are massive for this team, some big men provide spacing by spotting up for jump shots but Adams provides spacing the old fashioned way: by carving it out of the earth with a blunt tool. Hard, immovable screens which create those pockets of space for guys to pull up from within.

The Grizzlies aren’t actually a massive pick and roll team. They’re mid-table on most of the stats, from regularity to efficiency and all points in between. But rustle deeper within that mid-table-ness and you’ll see they’re actually second to last in terms of pick and roll plays designed for the roller. Who, in this case, is usually Steven Adams.

Russell Westbrook used to enjoy a cheeky lob out of the PnR for Adams a couple times per game back in their Thunder days but Memphis don’t do that. They’ve got speedy guards who finish well at the rim or from mid-range and those PnR scenarios are meant for them. Let Adams do his thing, then react to the space that he creates. Either a lane to the hoop or a pull-up. What they almost never do is go back to the big man. Maybe a couple times per game at most (and not necessarily for Adams either – Brandon Clarke is a little more that vibe).

No shocker that the Denver Nuggets have the highest frequency of such plays. Got the reigning (and should be two-time reigning soon if folks are paying attention) MVP Nikola Jokic at the five so you wanna use him, makes sense. Also no surprise that the lowest frequency of such plays is for the Golden State Warriors. The kings of the jump shot.

That doesn’t mean that Adams is out of the play once he’s set his screen though. He’s still rolling, mate. Don’t even worry about it. But he’s rolling for the rebound. Not only from those PnR sets either, that was just a nice entry point because there are stats for it, but basically any time a teammate gets downhill towards the bucket he’s following them in their wake for the second chancer. Feast your eyes upon the evidence...

The Coach Speaks

Taylor Jenkins: “He’s playing tremendous basketball right now. Just on a nightly basis you can always bank on him going out there and playing with an extreme level of physicality. the second chance points, second chance opportunities, 50/50 balls. I think his defence has steadily gotten better as the season’s gone along. Obviously when he can put it in the hole and score with that force that’s huge for us. His play-making ability. Having that on a nightly basis is huge for us and a constant that we need.”

Free Throw Box Out Tricks

Surely must have mentioned this before but there are two things that Adams does which makes his free throw box outs so funky. One is that he’ll do this thing where he leans in and draws contact with a fella to get their body weight angled towards him then he’ll use that body weight to rip past them in the other direction. The other thing he does in these scenarios is he winds people up doing things like this...

Any advantage you can get is worthwhile, folks. No matter how you accomplish it.

SLAM DUNKS

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