Knicks, Thunder offer opposite answers to the question: Does rebounding still

In this pace and space NBA, I’d like to offer a question: Does rebounding still matter?

Of course, any coach will tell you it does, that one failed rebound can lead to a possession that swings the margin of a game. But in the grander scheme of things, does rebounding still matter? Is it that essential to success, or is it just a nice thing to have as an add-on? Or worse, is it a contrarian indicator that your team is too bully-ball to succeed in this era?

I bring that up because of the two diametrically opposite approaches to rebounding that we’ll see in the second round of the playoffs. On the one hand, we have Oklahoma City; the Thunder start a 208-pound center, often don’t play a center at all when he leaves the court and frequently play lineups with four guards. They ranked 29th in the NBA in rebound rate this season, topping only the lowly Washington Wizards … and yet they won 57 games and earned the top seed in the Western Conference.

On the other hand, we have the New York Knicks. They play a true center all 48 minutes, no matter what, and although they are small on the perimeter, they crash the boards with such wild abandon that they recovered a league-leading 29.4 percent of their missed shots. In the playoffs, New York smashed Philadelphia on the glass by grabbing 32.2 percent of the available offensive boards, earning 23 extra possessions (compared to Philly’s total) that were critical in their white-knuckle six-game series win.

Let’s start delving into this question with Oklahoma City. To be frank, yes, the Thunder suck at rebounding. Here’s a clip from a midseason game against Utah, where four OKC players are in the paint but nailed to the floor while the one nearby Jazz player collects the rebound.

Look hard enough in an 82-game season and you can find a clip like this for any team; the thing about the Thunder was that you could find it almost every game, especially in the first half of the season. At least this one is of a big guy getting the board and not, say, Collin Sexton or Dennis Smith Jr. (both of whom had a field day on the offensive glass against the Thunder).

It’s not hard to put together how the Thunder might be at a disadvantage on the glass. Their starting center, Chet Holmgren, recovered just 15 percent of missed shots, which is above the league average of 10 percent but very low for a full-time starting center. (Most of them get around 18 to 20 percent; Phoenix’s Jusuf Nurkić led the league at 22.8 percent, including a 31-rebound game against the Thunder.)

Their backup centers, to the extent the Thunder played a center when Holmgren was out, were worse, with Jaylin Williams at 14.5 percent and Kenrich Williams at 11.3 percent. As far as plus rebounders go in OKC’s rotation, there’s one: Josh Giddey, who recovered a respectable 14.2 percent of missed shots. But he often finishes games on the bench.

The eye test shows pretty quickly why they have problems. That Brooklyn clip is worth a…