Send two to the offensive glass again

A generation of coaches taught everybody to retreat after a shot, and the teams quietly ignoring that advice are getting free possessions.

For about a decade the orthodoxy was settled. When a shot goes up, everybody gets back. Offensive rebounds were nice, transition defence was necessary, and the maths said the necessary thing was worth more.

The maths was right at the time and it is worth revisiting now, because a few things have changed.

The first is where shots come from. A long three that clangs off the front of the rim produces a long rebound, and long rebounds land in the region between the free throw line and the arc, which is exactly where a crashing wing can get to. The old numbers were built on an era with more mid-range attempts and shorter caroms into a crowd of big bodies.

The second is who is on the floor. Modern lineups often have one true big and four players who are quick enough to recover, which means sending a second man to the glass costs less in transition risk than it used to. A wing crashing from the weak side can get back into the play in a way that a slow centre never could.

The third is that a putback is the most efficient shot in the sport. Not a good shot, the best one. Uncontested, at the rim, against a defence that has not reset, with a decent chance of a foul on top.

So the arithmetic has moved, and you can see certain teams acting on it while never quite saying so. Two men on the glass as a default, three on a designed play, and a defined rule about who gets back. Usually the point guard, always, no exceptions, plus whoever took the shot.

The bit I find genuinely clever is the tactic of crashing specifically when the shot comes from the weak side, because the defender closest to the shooter has to close out and cannot box out simultaneously. That is a free run at the rim, created by geometry rather than effort.

None of this argues for the old approach of throwing three big bodies at every miss and living with the consequences. It argues for the decision being situational, taken by players who have been told what the rule is, rather than an instruction to retreat that gets applied identically whether the shot was a corner three or a heave at the shot clock.