More NBA games mean more observations from around the league that can be supported by the data. Some of the topics in this week’s edition of Coach Spins’ Clipboard are ones that buck many of the trends taking place in the NBA and show there’s still some value in being a contrarian.

1. Finding Value on the Offensive Glass

As a stats junkie and someone constantly using the data to inform best practices for my own coaching, I’ve always toyed with one constant idea as the game gets more and more focused on three-point barrages. At this point, it’s fairly well documented that the game is trending towards valuing the deep ball, and longer shots have longer rebounds which can lead to transition opportunities if teams crash the offensive glass too greedily. Transition offense, usually the most efficient opportunity for an offense to score, is what teams try to avoid giving up. Put two and two together, and you get a huge drop-off in emphasis on offensive rebounding.

But I wonder, is there a good deal of value in being a contrarian? What type of production would crashing the glass yield in today’s game? If offensive rebounding is a smaller part of the game, doesn’t defensive rebounding become less of a focus, opening an opportunity for timely offensive rebounds? How do you quantify the demoralization factor that comes to a team that just allowed another team a second chance on a possession?

The numbers are certainly the numbers, but they also change when everyone starts to think the same way. Perhaps we need to see what might happen when somebody doesn’t conform to the league-wide trend.

The data available on this season’s offensive-rebounding metrics might be enough to eventually convince some team to go all-in on bucking the shooting craze. The league-average team gets 1.105 points per possession on put-back attempts, while scoring 0.944 points per possession in the half-court. The league average on spot-up shooting is pegged at just 1.0 points per possession. Five of the top eight offensive-rebounding teams in the league, in terms of scoring efficiency, would be playoff bound if the season ended today. The Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder are the only two teams in the bottom six who are currently in the postseason picture.

It goes without saying that being an effective offensive-rebounding team (meaning one that creates quality scoring chances and converts them) is much more important than being a frequent offensive-rebounding team. But the two do have a strong correlation. The New Orleans Pelicans aren’t crashing the glass at a high rate (23rd in terms of put-back frequency) but are converting on nearly 70 percent of their offensive-rebound attempts. The Pelicans, San Antonio Spurs, Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Clippers, the top four teams in the league when it comes to field-goal percentage on second-chance attempts, all boast half-court offenses in the top half of the league.

But without seeing one team so dedicated to offensive rebounding, it’ll be hard to know how much of that is driven by just having better finishers and how much the effectiveness might go down if they made a conscious effort to crash the glass more. The point of this mini-rant? There might be enough to show that if a team has the right personnel to defend the three-point line while also finding ways to crash the glass frequently and effectively, that team may have a legitimate chance to provide some matchup nightmares for these stretch-shooting, switchy lineups that are now common across the league.

Some value definitely exists just out of being different.

2. Flourishing Rondae Hollis-Jefferson

Raise your hand if you would have guessed Rondae Hollis-Jefferson is a top-five scorer in post-ups across the league heading into 2018.

Bueller? Bueller?

That’s right, nobody! Hollis-Jefferson trails only Al Jefferson (no relation) in post-up effectiveness for those who gain at least 10 percent of their shots from these situations, according to Synergy Sports Tech. His 1.191 points per possession are a fantastic rate and prove RHJ is finally carving out a niche in a modern NBA offense. Instead of trying to bully drive past stiffer NBA posts, he’s doing his work early between 10 and 15 feet from the basket, taking his time to catch and face-up, and making a quick burst to the rim.

Defenders still fear the cageyness of his drives, those long arms, unorthodox finishes and bursts of insane athletic explosiveness. They give him cushion to shoot 15-footers, and he’s proving effective at knocking them down:

When they get chest to chest with Rondae and play the jumper, he’s so quick with his first step and great at absorbing contact:

Brooklyn Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson does a great job occupying help defense, blending how he knows opponents will scout and defend them in the half court (taking away the three-point line) with actions designed to use their scouting prowess against them. Teams that play the Nets have bigger fish to fry than tinkering with rotations to find the right defenders to put on Hollis-Jefferson or spending their precious time in walkthroughs trying to scheme to take away his post touches. It’d be nearly insulting to think Hollis-Jefferson can’t be guarded one-on-one.

Yet here he is, taking it to LeBron James with isolation turnaround fadeaways, bullying smaller wings after a switch and driving past even the more mobile 4s to reach the rim. Play a stiff on Hollis-Jefferson, and Atkinson will just dial up a different mode of attack, spreading out the floor and letting RHJ drive to the hoop one-on-one:

It’s hardly enough to get excited about on a major scale, but Brooklyn fans deserve some minor victories. Hollis-Jefferson finally rounding into a reliable and positive offensive force is exactly what they need. His shooting from deep has hovered around 30 percent all season, and he’s adding new facets to his game that open up more space for that number to be consistent. He’s figured out what Michael Kidd-Gilchrist never could to become a good player on both ends of the court.

3. Hassan Whiteside, Serial Pump-Fake Biter

Mention the most sought-after defensive attributes for a big man and the phrase “rim-protection” will be thrown around like a pigskin on Sundays. The image of rim-protection that undoubtedly jumps in your head: a long, gangly big man swatting shots at the rim and waving his finger like Dikembe Mutombo.

Truthfully, shot-blocking is only a portion of rim-protection. The best interior defenders are able to contest shots without fouling, use their length and size to alter both shots and passes, and either prevent offensive rebounds or clear space for their teammates to do so. Not everything revolves around simple blocks.

That’s part of the reason Hassan Whiteside doesn’t sit in the top tier of rim-protectors in my book. His Synergy statistics and metrics all rate out well on the defensive end, and his blocked shot totals are routinely among the top in the league. Whiteside’s length discourages more shots at the rim than can be statistically quantified…he’s a very good help defender.

But Hassan has a bad habit he must break if he wants to elevate himself into that top tier: trying to block every single shot. Few players bite on more pump fakes and leave their feet more than Whiteside, who is clearly just looking to use his length and pad his stats.

This is especially true in single post-ups against him, where one-on-one isolations net a 62 percent field-goal percentage against Whiteside. Patient pivot moves and head fakes send him flying, especially when he’s stretched to the short corner against a face-up jump shooter. One simple show-and-go takes all the rim-protection away from Miami’s defense:

As a coach, it’s hard to find the balance for maximizing Whiteside’s skills while keeping his defense somewhat reliable. His instincts and shot-blocking are what the defense thrives on, so getting him to dial those back may be a losing proposition. But getting him to be a little more reactive—and a little less jumpy—could save the Heat a key basket or two.

Miami is 11-8 with Whiteside in the lineup; his rim-protection and presence inside is an overall huge positive for the Heat. Still, I can’t help but think about how much better he, and the team, might be if he weren’t trying to send every shot around him into orbit.

4. “Safe Attackers” in the NBA

A coach can have some anxiety about giving someone the green light to go all out on rim attacks. Players who have the ball in their hands and are always in motion are usually the most turnover prone—you need to have the ball in order to turn it over, after all.

Coaches know dribble penetration is necessary, and build their offense around it. During this analytics push, there seems to be no more useful play than one that ends in a shooting foul. We still don’t have an accurate way to quantify the value of drawing a foul on an opponent and how that may change the flow of the game, but the two shots at the charity stripe tend to be pretty useful.

So what about those players who possess the ability to get to the free-throw line at a high rate but don’t bring with that gift the erratic and unpredictable plays that end in a turnover? I call those players “safe attackers.” More quantifiably, they have a higher shooting foul rate than turnover rate. Below is a list of those players who meet the criteria while finishing at least 15 percent of their team’s possessions:

A pretty impressive list, with a few surprising inclusions.

Tobias Harris, who is just incredibly trustworthy when it comes to taking care of the ball, has the lowest foul rate of the group, but his role on the wings dictates his lower turnover rate. T.J. Warren of the Phoenix Suns is another unexpected name, but he’s always in attack mode for himself; his lack of passing out to teammates is part of the reason his turnover rate is so low.

The other players are all a really interesting mix of star players who simply generate positive plays whenever the ball is in their hands. Seeing Kemba Walker of the Charlotte Hornets with the highest pure assists per game while boasting a really low turnover rate is an anomaly for the point guard position. If it hasn’t become clear from reading my posts on Kemba already, he’s one of my favorite players in the league.

The relationship between assists per game and turnover rate is vital to understanding just how much these players are trusted to create within their offenses. The guys who drive possessions more frequently but don’t increase their turnovers are extremely clutch. Jimmy Butler, Walker and DeMar DeRozan all assist more than four baskets per game for their teammates while boasting a sub-10 turnover rate. That’s pretty damn good given the high usage rates at play.

Side note: Anybody else notice the Minnesota Timberwolves have three players on this list? While it’s perplexing enough that they have three players to each account for at least 15 percent of their team’s offense, the fact each member of the trio takes good care of the basketball and generates high-quality free-throw attempts is vital to their half-court offense. The Wolves take the third-most free throws per game and have the second-lowest turnover rate in the league. Those are the type of metrics that help elevate a team despite their shot selection (27th in three-point attempts, 28th in percentage) and pace (22nd in the league).

5. Eric Moreland’s Passing Prowess

No team runs more dribble handoffs than the Detroit Pistons. As part of head coach Stan Van Gundy’s cognizant effort to draw rim-protectors farther away from the basket and open up the lane for guards to attack, the offense has been redesigned this year to run through bigs at the elbows or top of the key. Eric Moreland, the former Oregon State Beaver who found his way as a bench filler onto this Pistons roster, has thrived in a more creating-based role for the Pistons.

Moreland averages 2.7 assists per 36 minutes, a hefty amount for a backup big man who shares the floor with Ish Smith. His role is to engage mostly in dribble handoffs, using angles to open up attacking territories for his teammates. The team as a whole has regressed on its scoring out of these situations over the last month—a large portion of the reason it’s sputtered after a hot start.

But Moreland may be most effective as a passer off the offensive glass. He uses his long arms to pull in rebounds and remains patient. Instead of forcing a quick putback, he gathers and surveys the perimeter, looking for kick-out threes. When the Pistons cut to the rim around Moreland, he’s always primed to hit them in stride towards the hoop:

Detroit may still want to seek an upgrade somewhere in its frontcourt near the trade deadline, but Van Gundy should feel comfortable knowing Moreland will find ways to impact the game when he’s in. He’s been a good find so far for Detroit.

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All stats are current as of Jan. 5, 2018 and unless otherwise noted are courtesy of NBA.com, Synergy Sports Tech or Basketball-Reference.