Next time Russell Westbrook, Paul George or Carmelo Anthony take a questionable shot, pay attention to what’s going on underneath the basket. Odds are you’ll see a wrestling match taking place in the restricted area with Steven Adams front and center. Sometimes it’ll just be him and his defender exchanging elbows while they jockey for position. Other times Adams will be surrounded by multiple defenders, each of them using all of their strength to prevent him from creating a second chance opportunity for himself or one of his teammates.
The Thunder expect nothing less from Adams. Although those wrestling matches don’t always amount to something, knowing their center is in position for an offensive rebound gives Westbrook, George and Anthony the confidence to shoot whenever they think they have an advantage. George said as much following the Thunder’s victory against the Lakers on Jan. 17, a game in which Adams finished with 21 points and seven offensive rebounds in 26 minutes of action.
"It feels like we can take any shot we want," George told the Norman Transcript’s Fred Katz about Adams’ offensive rebounding. "Steve’s going to go get it. We feel that. I feel that, Russ feels that, Melo feels that. It puts us in a better rhythm knowing that there’s a guy that’s going to, whether it’s a good or a bad shot we take, it’ll possibly end up as a basket anyway with Steve down there. It allows us to be more aggressive."
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The reason George feels that way is because there isn’t anyone in the league who pulls down as many offensive rebounds as Adams does on a nightly basis.
He has recorded a total of 216 offensive rebounds through 42 games this season, which works out to be an average of 5.1 per contest. Adams uses those opportunities to generate over a quarter of his own offense and to create second chance opportunities for his teammates. According to NBA.com, the Thunder average 17.3 second chance points per 100 possessions with Adams on the court compared to 10.8 second chance points per 100 possessions with him on the bench this season. The former would lead the league by a large margin, and the latter would be one of the worst marks in the league.
How does he do it? Some of his success is simple to explain: Adams is a mammoth of a human being. Standing at 7-feet and weighing in at a solid 255-pounds, he is one of the more imposing centers in the league today. (Jimmy Butler, an extremely strong dude himself, said he thought his life was over after Adams hit him with a screen during a game this season.) It gives Adams the tools to be a one-man wrecking crew on the offensive glass because he can outmuscle just about anyone standing in his way.
"I don’t think one man can stop [Adams] in the paint," Anthony told Katz. "When he’s being aggressive and he’s going to the offensive glass, if it’s him versus you, you’re going to lose that battle every single time. It forces teams to bring two, three guys in the paint to try and keep him off the boards."
Robin Lopez, for example, is the same height as Adams but is listed as being 22 pounds heavier. And yet, Lopez couldn’t use that weight advantage to keep him out of the paint during their matchup on Oct. 28, when Adams collected five offensive rebounds in 28 minutes of game time.
The same goes for Dwight Howard, who is one of the most reliable defensive rebounders in NBA history. After Adams dominated the Hornets with seven offensive rebounds in a game this season, Howard’s teammate Marvin Williams had this to say about the Thunder center: "We rely so much on Dwight because nine times out of 10 he’s physically overpowering everybody, but Steven Adams is that one time," Williams told Katz. "Dwight was kind of asked to keep him off the glass and rebound, which is too difficult to do."
To Williams’ point, putting a body on Adams isn’t enough. It’s usually a two-man job to keep him out the paint, one to box him out and one to actually grab the rebound. Otherwise they run the risk of him using his 7-5 wingspan to reach over them for putback opportunities.
Size alone doesn’t make Adams a dominant offensive rebounder, though. (If it was that easy, it would be a much more crowded field.)
One way Adams begins to separate himself from other players at his position is he's relentless when it comes to pursuing offensive rebounds. In addition to leading the league in offensive rebounds per game, Adams is one of only two players (alongside Andre Drummond) averaging at least 10.0 offensive rebounding chances per game this season. It helps that he scores almost half of his points out of the pick-and-roll and on cuts — both are plays that position him close to the basket — but Adams wears teams down by going after every possible offensive rebound.
Doing so forces teams to be disciplined with their boxouts. If they aren’t, Adams will make them pay by spotting the weakness, initiating the contact and using his athleticism to beat them to the ball or his strength to drive them out of position.
It helps that Adams has picked up some tricks of the trade over the years as well. This one in particular works wonders when Westbrook is on the floor.
It’s easy to miss what Adams does if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Watch it again, and you’ll notice Adams appears to be clearing out to the weakside to give Westbrook and Anthony the space they need to run a pick-and-pop. Adams, however, stops in the middle of the paint to set a back screen on his own defender. Not only does it neutralize the Bulls’ best rim protector, it paves the way for Westbrook to score an uncontested basket.
Lopez failed to recognize what was going on, but those screens from Adams aren’t always well disguised. They don’t have to be, either. All Adams need to do is establish himself as a roadblock by making contact with his defender. When successful, it forces that individual to decide between sticking with Adams to prevent the offensive rebound or abandoning him to protect the basket.
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Seeing as like-sized players have trouble keeping Adams off the offensive glass, smaller players have absolutely no chance. It puts shot blockers in an incredibly delicate position.
All of this has Adams operating at a level we’ve never seen before. According to StatMuse, he is on pace to become the first player in NBA history to average at least 5.0 offensive rebounds per game and less than 10.0 total rebounds per game. (Adams currently ranks 41st amongst centers this season with 3.8 defensive rebounds per game). He’s also in a rare group of players to ever have a better offensive rebounding rate than defensive rebounding rate, meaning Adams pulls down a higher percentage of available offensive rebounds (17.3 percent) than available defensive rebounds (13.6 percent).
That’s not to say Adams is a poor defensive rebounder. Westbrook leads the Thunder in defensive rebounds per game, but only 13.9 percent of those have been contested because Adams usually does the dirty work by boxing out the biggest offensive rebounding threat on the opposing team to give Westbrook an opportunity to grab and go. While there is a stat-padding element to those possessions, cutting out the middleman helps Westbrook, who leads the league with 6.2 transition possessions per game, put pressure on teams following missed shots.
Adams could be more aggressive on the defensive glass — he averages 7.6 defensive rebounding chances per game — but he seems perfectly content leaving that to Westbrook while he focuses on grabbing offensive rebounds at a historic rate instead. It makes him an invaluable part of the Thunder as a whole, and a key to the individual success of Westbrook, George and Anthony.
