Jared Dudley left an imprint all over game two between the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs. He grabbed four offensive rebounds (the same amount as 6-10 Amar’e Stoudemire) and hit a key three pointer in the fourth when the game was tied at 80. But what Dudley brought most to the game was his intensity. The Suns struggled early and Dudley's aggressive play brought the team a boost off of the bench. In the second quarter alone, Dudley drew fouls on 4 Spurs: Richard Jefferson, Manu Ginobili, Matt Bonner and DeJuan Blair, contributing to the Suns 14 point advantage at the free throw line. With 3:47 left in the third, Dudley drew Tim Duncan’s third foul which was key as only a minute and a half later, Duncan picked up his fourth foul and was taken out of the game. The Suns then went on a 6-0 run. For the game, Dudley drew 8 fouls and despite his intensity on both the offensive and defensive end, he only committed 2 fouls. His energy off of the bench was crucial to the Suns victory. Proposed new stat: number of fouls drawn by a player. Then you can go a step further and look at the ratio of fouls drawn to fouls committed - an efficiency metric similar to the assist to turnover ratio, but used to measure the effectiveness of a player's intensity. Thoughts?
I really like your idea of introducing a new metric. Definitely makes sense!
ReplyDeleteThe current way of measuring this is to see how many free throws a player attempted--e.g. if J-Rich shot 6 free throws, he drew 3 fouls. But that is clearly not full-proof...what if he shot 2 technical free throws? CRUCIALLY, as you point out, drawing fouls that do not result in free throws (at least not directly) can change the complexion of the game. I agree that we do need to measure this. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's a great idea - sort of reminds me of tracking how many times someone is blocked in addition to how many blocks they have. A player drawing a lot of fouls is also helping his team get into the bonus more quickly, crucial particularly in the 4th qtr.
ReplyDeleteQuick follow-up. I wonder if there are any players that are in the top 50 in drawing fouls, but are NOT in the top 50 in attempted free-throws. If there are such players, then it would be that much more reason to include the new stat that Barrie proposes.
ReplyDeleteThis would be an interesting statistic to keep track of; however, I highly doubt that the NBA would ever go for it. With the recent Durant foul controversy, I don't think they want to draw any more attention to the fact that some players get fouled much more often than they foul. But I think keeping track of the offensive fouls players draw could be an interesting compromise.
ReplyDeleteGreg if you would keep track of offensive fouls, the line to Vladi/Fish school of flopping would go out the staples center.
ReplyDeleteBarrie how would you separate drawing a foul and being fouled on purpose? Things like hack-a-shaq or fouling someone to stop the game clock at the end of the game? Overall like the idea though.
That's a good point, Ilya - the stat wouldn't be entirely clean. I think its important to remember that some stats are inherently flawed because we currently can't separate one-off situations. One example is field goal percentage. There are many instances when a player has to throw up a shot to beat the shot clock or before time expires (he may not have wanted to attempt a field goal but was forced into the situation by a teammate or timing) - these shots are usually missed which brings down the player's field goal percentage.
ReplyDeleteBut again, I agree that there are problems with tracking fouls drawn - would be nice if Shaq and Howard learned how to make free throws!