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Looking at box score there is usually a column for team rebounds. These team rebounds are not divided into offensive and defensive rebounds which complicates calculating the total number of possessions in the game. My understanding is that a team is credited with a team rebound if the game clock expires after a shot but before anyone is able to control the rebound, the rebound goes out of bounds and the team keeping or gaining possession is credited with the team rebound, or the defensive team is given a team rebound when a shot is taken right before the shot clock expires but does not hit the rim. Is this correct? If so, it would seem that almost all of these team rebounds are defensive rebounds.

I'm not 100% positive, but I believe free throws that aren't up for grabs (i.e. the first of a 2-shot series or first and second of a three-shot series) are team rebounds for the offense.

Here are the number of team rebounds thus far in 2012-13 when the previous play was actually a FGA (not a FTA):

offensive = 7503
defensive = 4947

Thanks Evan. I didn't realize when a team misses the first free throw on a two shot free throw that the opposing team is given a team rebound. I don't really understand that logic. Maybe someday they will just record possessions in the boxscore.

elbicho wrote:I didn't realize when a team misses the first free throw on a two shot free throw that the opposing team is given a team rebound. I don't really understand that logic.

Somebody (I want to say Grantland) just did a piece about it. The idea behind crediting the offense getting credited with a team rebound on a missed free-throw is so that the scorekeeper can add up all the rebounds (team, defensive, and offensive) and that total will equal the sum total of all the missed shots. It came about to make it harder for mistakes to be made, for a scorekeeper to deliberately give a guy an extra rebound or two that he never got, or to make the box-score seem more "complete."

The difference is in college hoops the two categories of team rebounds and dead-ball rebounds allow scorekeepers to separate the rebounds that continue possessions (e.g. missed shot knocked out of bounds by the defense) from rebounds that are strictly kept for bookkeeping purposes (e.g. missed first free throw). It's the one place I can think of where college scorekeeping is ahead of the NBA.

Sorry for reanimating this thread. But I wanted to ask how team rebounds are handled. In simple checks, I found team rebounds in the play by play, but I think they don‘t show up in the boxscores. In such cases I expected to find the overall defensive team rebounds in the boxscore not matching the sum of the individual defensive rebounds by the players - the number of team rebounds being the difference between those calculations. But that did not happen, as the they always matched.
Therefore, do boxscores ignore team rebounds? If that's the case it would have an impact on stats like team DRB% or team ORB%. Positively biased for teams that get player rebound instead of team rebounds. It is not unusual that in a play by play of one game there are 10-14 team rebounds and only some occur between free throws like described in the posts before. To me that would be significantly impacting those team rebound percentage stats.


Edit: I took a deeper dive into this team rebound topic, to see whether it makes sense to leave them out of rebound percentage stats.
-there are those team rebounds that were discussed above a few years ago. After missed free throws it obviously makes no sense to count them.
- a similiar type of rebound is listed with shots at the end of quarters that are not rebounded before the time expired. They should not be counted too.
- the same goes for shot clock expired shots, i.e. airballs.

However I feel there are three type of rebounds that are up to debate whether they should be counted:
- when a rebound goes out of bounds the possession is continued (offensive rebound) or changes (defensive rebound). But it never shows up in the team defensive/offensive rebound percentage. That makes no sense to me. In my opinion those team rebounds should definitely count something, otherwise the team that secures those type of team rebounds is punished.
- after blocks a rebound can be credited to a player or a team. I feel it is kind of inconsistent that in a same type of sequence a team rebound percentage gets upgraded (when a certain player collects the loose ball after a block), but it does not when the team rebounds it (i.e. an out of bounds situation). Those team rebounds should be taken into consideration in my opinion.
- when some type of loose ball fouls occur while fighting for the rebound. This is rather debateable for me. On one hand, this play is credited as a foul and finds its way into the boxscore. However, to me
both teams are trying to get the ball after a missed shot. And the one who fouls in this process takes his team to get the rebound. As a consequence the other team gets the ball. To me this is a situation that should be taken into account when calculating team rebound percentages.