The NBA season is almost a quarter over, but it still feels like we’re learning a lot about what’s real and what’s not. Between hot shooting and a depressing number of star injuries, stories and statistics can still undergo volatile swings one way or another.

According to an analysis by Krishna Narsu of Nylon Calculus, the recovery rate can be trusted around the 15-game mark, which is a threshold the league recently crossed. While there are clearly teams that have spent much or all of the season underplayed, this seems like a good time to take a look at this statistic.

Rebounding is an extremely effective means of creating extra possessions for your offense and racking up points on the attacking side, while limiting your opponents’ ability to do so by controlling the defensive glass turns the possession battle in your favor on the other. side holds.

It takes a certain amount of discipline, effort and yes, size to be a dominant, rebounding team. It’s also far from the be-all and end-all of winning basketball games. In a rough look, over the past four seasons, Conference Finalists have averaged 11th in the league in rebounding percentage, ranging from fourth (Nuggets in 2023) to 26th (Mavericks in 2024).

Here we outline which teams are on the glass so far this season.

Subscribe to the whiteboard, FanSided’s daily email newsletter about all things basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend! If you don’t like The Whiteboard, share it with an enemy.

Last season, the league leaders were the Knicks at 52.7 percent, while the Rockets led the league at 53.0 percent the year before, so these numbers are right in line with what we’ve seen recently.

The Memphis Grizzlies and their towering rookie center, Zach Edey, are in the midst of a renaissance in the league at this point in the season. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City Thunder are at the bottom of the league with their small lineups trying to stay afloat after injuries to their big men.

Within the top five, the Raptors, Rockets, Grizzlies and Hornets get their numbers largely from a focus on crashing the offensive glass, as they rank first, second, third and fourth in the league in terms of offense, respectively recovery.

Edey is crushing opponents on the offensive glass for fourth in the league in individual offensive rebounding rate (min. 15 minutes per game), capturing more than three per game in just 20 minutes per game. At 7-foot-4, it’s so hard to keep him off the boards and this part of his game has predictably translated extremely well in college.

However, Edey is not alone. According to Cleaning the Glass, he is one of five players on the roster who rank in the 80th percentile or better for their ranking in offensive rebounding. Jake LaRavia, Brandon Clarke, Marcus Smart and John Konchar all crash the offensive glass with reckless abandon, flying in from all over the court.

On the other hand, Memphis is just 23rd in the league in defensive rebounding percentage and 27th in opponent second-chance points per game. In fact, they have struggled to prevent opponents from using one of their strongest points against them.

They like to get out there and play in transition more often than any team in the league, so perhaps this is contributing to some missed defensive rebounding opportunities. Some of their other frontcourt players like Jaren Jackson Jr. and Jay Huff, are also relatively poor rebounders for their careers, which compounds the problem.

In Houston, everyone’s favorite bench duo of Amen Thompson and Tari Eason use their athleticism to help the Rockets control the boards on both ends as they sit in the top ten in both categories. Seriously, if you haven’t seen these two come into the game and create chaos in every corner of the field, you’re missing out.

The Rockets’ ability to create extra shots for themselves while limiting their opponents’ extra chances has been an extremely underrated part of their success so far this season. Coach Ime Udoka had dominating the boards high on his to-do list at the start of the season and they have not disappointed.

The Clippers, who are tied for third overall, are the only team in the top five to do so thanks to their defensive rebounding, where they rank first in the league at 74.6 percent. Their No. 5 defense, in addition to the abundance of talented defenders, is aided by their ability to limit opponents to one shot. They allow just 12.1 second-chance points per game, which is the second-fewest in the league.

On the other end of the spectrum, it seems like the Thunder can’t keep a player over 6-foot-4 on the court for too long and doesn’t rebound well at all. That said, they have the No. 1 defense in the league, so it’s hard to complain. They fly around the court and generate turnovers, while limiting offensive turnovers themselves to win the possession battle that way instead of on the glass. After the long-awaited debut of Isaiah Hartenstein, they are looking to strengthen this weakness while wreaking havoc before the shot goes up, which would make this elite team even scarier.

It shouldn’t be too surprising to see the 76ers also near the bottom of the list in their hellish season. Joel Embiid has clearly had an eventful start to the year and they are severely lacking size at every other position on the floor.

Overall, this list shows a bit of a mixed bag of teams up and down the list of wins leaders in the league right now. Six of the top 10 have a score above .500, while the other four have lost more games than they have won, which at first glance shows a weaker correlation between the two variables. The Rockets and Hornets are the only two teams in the top ten in both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage, but both have seen different results in the win/loss column as a result.

As teams get healthier, we could see bigger shifts in some of these numbers. So keep an eye on which teams will remain disciplined in their approach and which may decline as the season progresses.