NBA and possession battle: How Thunder, Pacers stack up with their peers

New York Times

2 days ago

A look at the box score from Game 4 of the Western Conference finals tells two stories. The Minnesota Timberwolves, coming off a 42-point victory against the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, scored 126 points and had the following statistical advantages:
But the final score read Thunder 128, Timberwolves 126, as the Thunder took a 3-1 series lead. As Timberwolves reserves Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Donte DiVincenzo looked at the stat sheet to understand what happened to them, their eyes were drawn to the same numbers.
'It says it all right here: They had 19 offensive rebounds,' Alexander-Walker said. 'We knew that's what they did. We knew that they wanted to turn us over. And we talked about it Game 3; we didn't let them do that. And we seen the result.'
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Both the Timberwolves and Thunder secured 19 offensive rebounds in Game 4, but the Thunder had 14 turnovers while the Timberwolves turned the ball over a whopping 23 times. That differential essentially decided the result in a two-point game.
'Nickeil said it: It's turnovers and rebounds,' DiVincenzo said. 'It's a possession game in the playoffs, and I think they just dominated us in those categories.'
Entering the NBA Finals, 77 games have been played this postseason. The winners of those games have won the possession battle by 116; that is, 116 more combined offensive rebounds and opponent turnovers. Of those 77 games, 46 of the winners also won the possession battle in that game. The finals matchup between the Thunder and Indiana Pacers, which begins Thursday in Oklahoma City, features the two teams in the league with the best assist-turnover ratios and two of the three best turnover percentages. Both Indiana and OKC have found success this season despite giving up ground on the offensive boards, largely because of how well they take care of the basketball.
It should not be surprising that the Thunder are dominating the possession battle in the playoffs. It's what they did in the regular season. They were outrebounded in the regular season, but the Thunder led the league in both forcing turnovers and holding on to the ball.
What does come as a surprise, however, is that Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault does not focus on turnovers in a vacuum.
'We're not going into the game saying 'We can't turn the ball over.' We don't go into the game saying, 'We got to turn the other team over.' … those are outcomes, just like the final score is an outcome,' Daigneault said. 'And so offensively, we want to be really, really well spaced. We want to be sharp in our actions. We want to keep the ball ahead of the defense, and we want to make quick decisions on the catch. If you do that, it should yield good things over the course of a large number of possessions. And then defensively, we want to guard the guy. We want to get back on defense. Same stuff everybody else emphasizes.'
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The Thunder had 435 fewer turnovers than their opponents in the regular season, the best differential since the league began tracking turnovers in 1973. Such a historic margin helped offset their deficiency in offensive rebounding. As a result, only the Houston Rockets were better in the possession battle than the Thunder during the regular season.
Here's a look at the possession battle rankings from the regular season, with the possession-battle column representing the approximate extra possessions a team earned per game based on the combined differentials of offensive rebounds and opponent turnovers:
'We do talk about that: more shots and better shots,' Daigneault said. 'It's that simple. You want to get more if you can, and you want to get the better shots in the game. How we do that is more process-based. But that's the name of the game. If you do that consistently, you'll be pretty good. Last season, rebounding was a huge deficiency for us that we had to overcome with the turnovers. This season, we've edged up in that and have been able to put lineups on the floor that have really clamped down (on) the defensive glass. 'We've improved our offensive rebounding, so we've turned the dials on that. Even though it's not top of the league, the way the turnovers are, that's been a huge help for us as well.'
A major part of the Thunder taking care of the ball so well is that their leader is safe with the basketball. NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the league in total points (2,484), while 25 players had more turnovers.
'The thing with Shai that I think goes underappreciated — everybody talks about shooting efficiency — he doesn't turn the ball over,' Daigneault said. 'So not only is he efficient in terms of the shot making from every level, but he doesn't give the ball to the other team very often. And that's a huge efficiency boost for us. He's obviously our highest usage player. And then the same is true on defense. We've got some monsters on the perimeter and rim deterrence at the rim. And that forces teams deeper into possessions, throwing more passes. All those things that increase the exposure risk of turnovers.
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'So it's personnel, and then it's fundamentals. And we let that kind of win the day.'
The New York Knicks ranked in the top 10 in the possession battle during the regular season, and the Pacers ranked in the lower half of the league, but the possession battle was a key storyline in the East finals. The Pacers won the margin by six in their improbable Game 1 comeback win at Madison Square Garden, forcing eight more turnovers than the Knicks to overcome a 13-11 offensive rebounding deficit.
New York actually won the possession battle in Game 4 by grabbing eight more offensive rebounds than the Pacers. But Indiana forced six more turnovers than the Knicks in a game that Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton compiled a historic 32-point triple-double with no turnovers.
Like the Thunder have with Gilgeous-Alexander, the Pacers have an All-NBA primary playmaker who has an uncanny ability to generate voluminous levels of offense without giving the ball away. Haliburton's Game 4 performance was his third with at least 30 points, 15 assists and zero turnovers. Only five other players have done that since the NBA started tracking individual turnovers in 1977: three before Haliburton entered the NBA (John Stockton, Chris Paul, LeBron James) and two since Haliburton was drafted in 2020 (James Harden, Nikola Jokić).
'He was really throwing the ball ahead, which was really important for us,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton's Game 4 performance that gave Indiana a 3-1 series lead. 'To not have any turnovers in any of those situations, too, it's pretty remarkable. But this has become his thing, and there will be a new statistical category perhaps named after him somewhere down the line.'
'I feel like we're making up stats at some point to make me look better,' joked Haliburton, the postseason leader in assists despite 16 players having more turnovers than him this postseason entering Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals.
The Knicks were favored entering the Eastern Conference finals and were expected to give the Pacers more of a challenge due to their ability to hurt Indiana on the glass. During the regular season, Thibodeau discussed 'fighting to win every possession and how important that is.'
'Every possession is important,' New York head coach Tom Thibodeau said. 'Where can you steal points from? You have to think that way throughout the course of the season.'
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The only starting lineup change Thibodeau made this postseason was to insert Mitchell Robinson at center in place of forward Josh Hart; Robinson leads all players in offensive rebounds this postseason, and he had five in the Knicks' Game 6 loss against the Pacers, a game in which New York won the possession battle but was outscored 34-13 off turnovers. For the series, the Pacers outscored the Knicks 140-61 off turnovers. The Knicks failed to take advantage of their rebounding edge to the same degree, outscoring the Pacers only 99-83 on second-chance points.
Going into next season, the possession battle figures to be a means for teams to sustain themselves even if the shooting isn't quite there yet.
The Rockets led the NBA in the possession battle this season on the strength of what was the league's best offensive rebounding margin by far. But Houston ranked 21st in both overall field goal percentage as well as 3-point percentage, and it was dead last in free-throw percentage. The only teams with a better record than the Rockets (52-30) were the Thunder, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics.
'It was a focus coming into last year,' said Rockets coach Ime Udoka, who just finished his second season in Houston. 'Offensive rebounding is something we targeted this year to be No. 1 at. So a combination of that, and when we do force turnovers, there's a lot of steals and live-ball turnovers. It's going to be a differentiating factor there as far as us getting shots. So taking care of the ball and then crashing our misses, which we're obviously top of the league at. Put those all together and defend like we're capable of, it's good results.'
Teams have different approaches to addressing the possession battle. Before his dismissal as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, Taylor Jenkins would make sure to flag clips if his team was slipping on offensive rebounds or turnovers. Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff is even more direct about making sure his players know what the numbers look like during games.
'We try to keep that one really raw, and we focus on rebounding and turnovers,' Bickerstaff said. 'It was one of our focuses, because that raw number, the guys can just see it quickly on a stat sheet, or look up on most of the boards and see the total number of rebounds, the offensive rebounds that we're giving up, and then whatever our turnovers are. And they can kind of recognize that quickly. … It's a priority for us to try to win the possession battle every night.'
Sometimes, the possession battle goes a long way toward explaining why a team might underachieve relative to its position entering the playoffs or why they weren't able to qualify for the postseason. The Los Angeles Lakers were one of nine teams to win at least 50 games this season. But only the Milwaukee Bucks made the playoffs with a worse possession-battle ranking than the Lakers, and of the nine 50-win teams, the Lakers were the only one that failed to win more than one playoff game. In Minnesota's first-round series victory over the Lakers, the Timberwolves won the possession battle in all five games, three of which ended in clutch time.
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'We've had some high turnover games, and those are probably the games that scare you the most,' Los Angeles head coach JJ Redick said. 'Live-ball turnovers are the kryptonite to your transition defense. … The good offense helps the good defense, and that helps you win the possession battle.'
The Phoenix Suns were a sparkling shooting team. If this were a make-or-miss league, then the Suns would have done a lot better than finish 36-46. Of the 12 best teams in the NBA in 3-point percentage, the Suns were the only team not to make the postseason, even though only the Bucks and Cavaliers were more accurate from 3. Only 10 teams were more accurate from the field overall than the Suns, but only the Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz ranked lower in the possession battle.
'Offensive rebounding, we don't get very many of those,' Mike Budenholzer said one month before he was fired as Suns head coach. 'Turnovers, we talked a lot about us taking care of the ball more. We've got to turn teams over more. So I think those are kind of the big drivers of the possession game. We've got to be better, particularly the rebounding and the turnovers. It's what it comes down to.'
The worst team in the league in the possession battle this past season was the team with the worst record, the Jazz. Will Hardy's team actually secured 26 more offensive rebounds than its opponents. But the Jazz were the anti-Thunder, setting the record this season for the worst turnover margin (444) since the league started tracking turnovers in 1973.
Simply put, earning more shots via turnovers and offensive rebounds can transform losses into comeback wins and small leads into blowout victories. In the finals, shot making will be important, but it will be impossible to ignore which team can generate the most shots compared to its opponent.
'I take pride in taking care of the ball,' Haliburton said. 'I feel like the more we take care of the ball as a team, the more opportunities we can shoot the ball. I feel like the more shots we get in a game, the better opportunity we have to win. … I'd rather do really anything else on the basketball court than turn the ball over.'