Leagues that pay offensive rebounds, and the centers who gain most

Some points leagues pay offensive and defensive rebounds separately, and one way to do it is a small bonus on the offensive kind on top of the normal rebound value. The setting looks minor, but offensive rebounds are concentrated in a small group of centers and a few athletic wings, so a bonus of even half a point moves those players several places while leaving the rest of the board almost untouched. A manager who knows the setting is there can take a center a round later than the rest of the league expects him to go, or a round earlier than his standard rank, and be right either way.

Projections publish total rebounds, not the split, so we estimate each player's offensive rebounds from his own share of offensive boards last season, pulled toward the typical share for his position when he grabbed few rebounds. Checked against the following season, that share predicted the typical player's offensive rebounds to within about a tenth of a rebound a game, and a player's share from one season correlated at 0.89 with the next among real rebounders. Here we reran our points board under Yahoo's default scoring, which pays 1.2 a rebound, with a half-point bonus for every offensive rebound on top.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.