Nov 27, 2013; Oklahoma City, OK, USA; San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker (9) is fouled while passing the ball by Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins (5) during the third quarter at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports
Over the last year, the combination of SportVU’s player tracking data on NBA.com with numbers from the basic box score has made for new, insightful statistics. Among the creations already out there, we now know a bit more about rim protection and just how much a player contributes to scoring opportunities, but we can also look at what might be more on the silly side of stats. For example, now that a player’s distance and fouls are both available, we can see who most and least resembled a walking foul with fouls per mile.
Below were the 10 highest fouls per mile averages last season, minimum 150 minutes. Players were also sorted into three positions: ‘B’ for big men or rather centers and most power forwards, ‘W’ for wings, and ‘PG’ for point guards. As usual, you can click on the screenshot to enlarge:
150 minutes wasn’t the strongest benchmark, helping Earl Watson crack the top 10, but it does just enough to show what kind of players would typically lead this stat: Limited big men who can’t stay on the floor partly because they foul at such a high rate. The NBA is fast-paced and defense is hard work. Hasheem Thabeet, Lou Amundson, Jason Collins, and even Watson all finished 2014 with more fouls than points. You can also see the top players in fouls per mile are juggled when compared to fouls per 100 possessions, the latter stat via Basketball-Reference.
None of those players logged over 1,000 minutes, though Alexis Ajinca started 30 of his 56 total games. Making 1,000 minutes the benchmark led to similar results in types of players, but quite a few provided positives in one way or another that allowed them to stay on the floor longer:
The top three players averaged about 1.3 less fouls per mile than Thabeet, an impressive drop. A couple more players for the Oklahoma City Thunder crack the list, though, in Steven Adams and Kendrick Perkins. Draymond Green was the only player I characterized as a wing to make an appearance, averaging .004 more fouls per mile than a better fit with this group: Kosta Koufus. Among the top 10, Greg Stiemsma was the only player to total more fouls than points, a feat that, with over 1,000 minutes, has been accomplished by only 17 players in league history.
Players labeled as bigs averaged about 0.4 more fouls per mile than wings or point guards, 1.45 to 1.06 and 1.04, respectively. It’s no surprise they were absent from the bottom 10 in this stat, a group with a bit more variety than the top 10:
There are some high-usage players like LeBron James who are either too important to their team to be in foul trouble or have become clever enough to avoid it, or a mix of both, but there also players who take on some of the tougher defensive assignments each game while others are better off “hidden”.
Tayshaun Prince blew everyone away, though, and he’s all by his lonesome in some charts I played with. One was just looking at total fouls and total distance. The R^2 for each position was fairly high, but not as high as I thought and especially for big men. That position had an R^2 of 0.35, the lowest of the three, but it’s more understandable when looking at the chart. Point guards had the highest R^2 at 0.50.
Below is the chart with player labels around the edges of it and the trendline for all players over 1,000 minutes, which yielded an R^2 of 0.27:
The top-half of the chart is covered mostly by the league’s big men with familiar faces from the leaders in fouls per mile in the top-left, but the centers and power forwards got more diverse with more miles logged. This is especially those who placed below the trendline. Most of them were a major piece to their respective teams so their fouls were more important.
The only point guards in the top-left of the chart were Mo Willams and Patrick Beverley, with both being understandable for different reasons, but especially Beverley with how aggressive he is as a defender. Some of the highest-usage guards were on the top-right, including Kyle Lowry way up with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. Lowry didn’t lead point guards in fouls per mile, but was in the middle of the top 10. Most players at that position and the wing were found on the bottom-half of the chart, and the trendlines for each showed point guards totaling more fouls than wings as their distance increased.
Offensive fouls obviously played a part in this. They help increase foul totals, but also more for certain players and skill sets than others. Looking at offensive fouls per 100 possessions with fouls per mile, the R^2 for bigs was 0.35, a strong number, but for wings and point guards it was 0.03 and 0.01, respectively. When looking at the percentage of a player’s fouls being offensive ones, the R^2 for bigs was 0.05, 0.001 for wings, and 0.04 for point guards. The charts for each, when compared with fouls per mile, were similar, but I wanted to show percentage of fouls from the offensive end because the players on the chart were more spread out and more than a few were on their own islands:
Among other new players labeled in the chart, though, there’s Russell Westbrook at the very top. He was far and away the leader among all point guards in percentage of fouls on offense at 22.12%, and second-highest in the league behind only Dwight Howard at 22.5%. There were also others players probably expected to be somewhere at the top of the chart such as DeMarcus Cousins and LeBron. On the other side, Tayshaun Prince is once again all by himself, but there are some interesting names somewhat nearby who played larger roles on offense like Kemba Walker, Bradley Beal and Ty Lawson.
Looking at trendlines, there was a very slightly positive correlation for big men, but for both wings and point guards the correlations were negative:
Maybe the trendlines for wings and point guards look weird, but that goes along with some of the players who had the lowest fouls per mile averages. It also makes sense when a player’s fouls increase that it’s difficult to sustain a high percentage of them coming on offense. If anything, it is the trendline for the bigs that is odd, though even that looks normal since they’re often at higher risk for offensive fouls.
Overall, fouls per mile confirms much of what we saw on the court last season. With another year of these kinds of numbers to combine and the way the league is headed with committing less fouls, Tayshaun Prince and/or LeBron James could lower their foul per mile averages even more. On the other hand, maybe a fringe-rotation big man takes the “walking foul” label to another level.