Improve Rebounding by Adding ONE Simple Rule to Your Offense
Improve your rebounding by adding this simple rule to your offense:
“Weakside player must get in rebounding position on EVERY shot. Anticipate.”
We added this rule to our motion offense a few years ago and it has helped us tremendously!
Last season our freshman team had a total offensive rebounding percentage of 38.6% compared to our opponents 25.2%. We had a significant rebounding advantage in almost every game. I believe this rule and our enforcement of this rule had a lot to do with our advantage in this area.
How to Implement the Rule
I believe you can utilize this rule in almost any offense. We usually run a 4 out 1 on motion offense. Here’s how it worked with the 4 out...
If your post player is on the weakside, you’re good to go.
However if your post player is on the strong side (see diagram on right), you teach your weakside guards to anticipate the shot and sneak into weakside rebounding position. It′s a rule you′ll need to require your players to follow.
You should also teach your players to fight for good position when going to the weakside. If they are already there, work for better position.
We also apply the rule when we run out 5 out motion. You simply teach your weakside guards to anticipate the shot and sneak into weakside rebounding position.
I have never tried using the rule with a continuity or called play offense. But you can consider using the same rule for those offenses too -- and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Now, you of course, need to enforce the rule for it to do any good. For us, by having the rule in writing it reminded our coaches and players that it was PART OF THE OFFENSE. And that we needed to do it every time -- which made the positioning easier for us to implement and more effective.
We often found ourselves blowing the whistle after a shot went up in practice and asking.. “Was anyone in weakside rebounding position? Why not? Whose responsibility was that?”
You have to hold players accountable.
Why do you want a player on the weakside for every shot?
Experience and analytics tell us the most that a large percentage of shots will end up near the weakside block.
Of course it depends on where the shot occurs. But the diagrams on the right (provided by Court Vision) give you an idea of the percentages based on where the shot occurs.
The red and yellow show the highest rebound frequency and the light gray show the lowest frequency.
The first diagram shows 3-pt shots coming from the corner and the second diagram shows shots coming from the wing.
As you can see, the heat maps show the highest frequency of rebounding occurring on the weakside (or “on the other side of the rim”).
What about the strong side?
Now ideally you have both the weakside and strong side block covered on all shots. But having a player on the weakside gives you bigger bang for your buck. In addition, having players anticipate on the strong side has negative impacts on our offensive spacing and took away driving lane opportunities.
So, we only enforce the rule on the weakside, but still encourage players to get position on both sides once the ball goes up.
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