NBA Assbound Analysis
Hey Ryen, now that you’re family and definitely coming on Mostly Sports soon, I figured I’d give you a potential talking point. After hearing those catty bitches talk about assbounds, I decided to actually look at them statistically across (recent) NBA history.
Tl;dr: Assbounding is at an all-time peak. 4 of the last 5 NBA Champions have been top 5 in assbounds per game. The Houston Rockets have a young core of elite assbounders. LeBron is not an ass(bound) guy. Ben Wallace is the assbounding GOAT. The GOATSE? Sorry.
NBA Assbound Analysis:
An ASSBOUND is when a player grabs an offensive rebound and immediately gets an assist.
I pulled play-by-play data from hoopR https://hoopr.sportsdataverse.org/ (goes back to 2002) and built the stat by scraping the play text itself. Unfortunately the play descriptions are not formatted consistently, so I had to match multiple rebound/assist text patterns manually. It’s a lot of data so I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed some.
Some Examples:
- Kenyon Martin Offensive Rebound.
- Todd MacCulloch made Layup. Assisted by Kenyon Martin.
- Josh Howard offensive rebound
- Jason Terry made Three Point Jumper. (Josh Howard assists)
Looking back I think a more accurate way of doing this would be with the athlete_id_x fields.
I also limited assbounds to plays where the assist and score happened within 5 seconds of the offensive rebound. Otherwise you start getting possessions where the ball may be passed around a bunch or the rebounder dribbles for a while.
Note: the 2002 season has suspiciously low assbound totals compared to every other season. My assumption is the early play-by-play text formatting was less reliable, or I fucked up, and honestly I do not care enough to potentially fix it.
Assbounds Over Time:
Assbounds per 100 possessions have generally increased over time in both the regular season and playoffs, especially beginning around the mid-2010s. They have nearly doubled since the early 2000s. It is very fitting that Mostly Sports brought up assbounds at the exact same time the NBA is experiencing the highest assbound rates ever. Ball Knowers.
The increase also lines up closely with the rise in 3-point volume during and after the Warriors dynasty. My guess is more missed 3s leads to more long rebounds leads to more assbounds. This is separate from the assbound conversation, but the fact that NBA teams now miss as many 3-pointers per game as 2-pointers is absolutely disgusting.
Best Assbounding Teams:
This graph shows the top 5 and bottom 5 assbounding teams each season, with the black line representing the league average. This is a messy graph but I spent way too much time trying to code it so I’m showing it off. What we can see is that the 2026 Houston Rockets are the greatest assbounding team ever and the Washington Wizards suck.
I do think this is a good view. Here we can see some of the consistently good assbounding teams. Early 2000s Pistons, Rose’s Bulls, Steph’s Warriors, the shoot a fuckload of 3s Celtics.
Something I find very interesting is 4 of the last 5 NBA Champions have been top 5 in assbounds per game, with the Thunder being the top assbounding team last year. Maybe the Knicks or Cavs can continue the trend. The Nuggets were ranked 22nd in 2023. The Thunder were ranked 6th this year.
Assbounds per game do appear to have at least some relationship with team success. Top 5 teams made the playoffs about 2/3rds of the time, while teams outside the top 10 were basically a coin flip. With 16 of the 30 teams making the playoffs (20 if you include the play-in), teams have a better chance of making the playoffs by getting picked out of a hat than being a mediocre or bad assbounding team.
Best Assbounders:
Here are the league leaders in assbounds for each season. Ben Wallace led the league 6 times in 7 seasons (potentially more if I had data prior to 2002), with some seasons at a modern NBA rate. Al Horford gets the longevity award. Steven Adams had the best individual season in 2022. I am surprised players like Draymond or Jokic have never led the league. Overall some pretty good to great players. Shoutout Bubble Jimmy.
I know this skews towards teams that went to the finals, but here are the playoff leaders in assbounds each season. We can see Ben Wallace dominating early again. In 2013 Chris Bosh had maybe the most famous assbound of all time. Josh Hart had an insane 2025 playoffs. I wonder why there are more guards and forwards on this list. LeBron James’ peak came in 2012 when he led the NBA playoffs in total assbounds and everything since then has become the falling action. Shoutout Bubble Jimmy.
Here are the top 10 career leaders in total assbounds and assbounds per game (minimum 50 games played). The only player in the top 10 of both lists is Ben Wallace. The Houston Rockets have the top 2 players in assbounds per game in Amen Thompson and Alperen Segun. They also have 4 of the top 25 with Steven Adams and Tari Eason. This is my new Young Core (and Steven Adams).
This also might be the lowest LeBron is on any all-time list. He ranks 82nd in career assbounds and has the lowest per game average of anyone in the top 100 (0.037). He currently has the same number (60) as his former teammate Anderson Varejao. However, LeBron is 3rd all-time in playoff assbounds with a more respectable per game rate of 0.083. LeBron-led teams had an league average assbound rank of 19.4. He had a top 5 team in 2011 (oof) and 2015 (fuck Kelly Olynyk). The only other time he had a top 10 assbounding team was in 2016 (goat). His teams were 13th in 2012, 23rd in 2013, 10th in 2016, and 26th in 2020.
The modern NBA completely dominates the best season leaderboard. 4 of the top 10 assbound seasons ever happened this year alone, and 7 of the top 10 have occurred since 2022. Even with that, Ben Wallace still owns 2 of the top 10 individual assbound seasons.
The GOAT(se):
I believe Ben Wallace is the greatest assbounder of all time.
He is 2nd all-time in career assbounds and still ranks 6th all-time in assbounds per game despite playing before the modern assbound boom. He led the league in assbounds 6 times in 7 seasons, led the playoffs multiple times, ranks 2nd all-time in playoff assbounds, and still owns 2 of the top 10 individual seasons ever recorded.
Google Sheet: ASSBOUNDS
Special thanks to hoopR, ggplot, dlpyr, and Mr. Ed.
Family.