How the Hornets Crash Without Compromising Transition Defense

At 7-23, a lot isn't going well for the Charlotte Hornets right now, but the one area that's been a bright spot (quite literally, see below) has been their offensive rebounding.

Snapshot from Cleaning The Glass

First-year head coach Charles Lee has dramatically improved the Hornets' effectiveness on the offensive glass.

After finishing 28th in ORB% (Offensive Rebounding Percentage) last season, they're all the way up to 3rd this season per Cleaning The Glass, corralling an impressive 31.6% of their misses.

While much of this can be credited to Charlotte's activity and effort, there's also been real strategy to their "crashing" that the players have executed extremely well.

Many teams are wary of a full-throttle attack to offensive rebounding because of the tradeoff to transition defense.

The Hornets, however, rank in the top 10 in limiting transition opportunities off of rebounds. They're currently accomplishing what few have by crashing without penalizing their transition defense.

The chart below plots a measure of offensive rebounding productivity (X) against transition frequency given up off rebounds (Y). The Hornets rank in the top three for crashing while limiting transition off rebounds at a top-10 rate:

Charlotte's bread-and-butter lies in rebounding their three-pointers: they rank 2nd in OREB off of 3PA (11th off 2PA) per PBPStats. I will focus on their crashing off of threes as a result.

Let's dive into the X's & O's!

The X's & O's

At base level, Charlotte generally sends 3 to the glass with the shooter and top-most player retreating back to defend.

There are a few keys to Charlotte's crashing that I've personally picked up on:

1. Corners: crash hard and exit through the elbow (we'll look into why below)

2. Top-most player and shooter get back to defend

3. Big/low man tries to win wrestling match

4. Always keep an eye on the trajectory of the ball

(NOTE: through my study, these have felt like guidelines and not strict, bounding rules; although this is expected behavior, there are exceptions)

To make these keys easier to internalize, I annotated them within an example clip:

A couple of these keys, especially, separate Charlotte as a team that crashes without giving up transition and thus deserve a closer look:

Corners: crash hard and exit through the elbow

When the ball goes up, players in the corner aggressively drive the baseline, ready for the ball.

But why exit through the elbow?

1. Long misses from threes often end up in the free-throw line area (as seen in the clip above)

2. If the ball isn't collected, it puts players in a position to "get back" defensively

The second point is key to the whole equation. Again, CHA wants to offensive rebound without giving up easy transition opportunities:

Aggressive crashes from the corner have also freed up the Hornets' bigs down low to rebound with less contention. Good defensive rebounding teams generally "gang rebound"— that is, guards and wings will group together to help their big win their matchup battle and secure the rebound:

Against Charlotte and its aggressive, all-around crashing, opposing non-bigs can't ignore their matchup to help their big rebound; they instead need to worry about keeping their own matchup off the glass.

As a result, Hornet bigs just have to win their individual "wrestling match" to get the offensive rebound:

This has played a role in Moussa Diabaté's dominant offensive rebounding season to this point (100th percentile ORB% per Cleaning The Glass).

Always keep an eye on the trajectory of the ball

This may sound simple, but it's a lot easier said than done.

Crashing the glass can be thought of as a gamble due to the aforementioned tradeoff to transition defense. Overcommitting, therefore, can be disastrous.

The Hornets do a fantastic job, especially for a young team, of keeping eyes on the ball and knowing 1) when they're in play to corral a miss and 2) when it's better to get back and defend.

This decision is often a split-second judgement call in real time, but the Hornets handle it expertly, as shown below:

Takeaways/Thoughts

The Hornets are a young team with a lot of growing to do, but it's encouraging to see them take a step in the right direction by executing their offensive rebounding scheme to a tee. Credit to Coach Lee and his staff for getting this buy-in from the roster! Principles and positioning are integral to the Hornets' offensive rebounding approach. It relies on calculated attacks when opportunities are present and heady retreats when they aren't. Charlotte has executed this approach well despite not having the best personnel, I wonder if other teams can find even greater success in replicating this.

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Data up-to-date as of 12/28/2024