How frequently teams play in the penalty
By Matt Femrite
In my last post about drawing and committing fouls, I looked at how long teams scored and defended in the penalty back to 1998. This post will touch how frequently teams get into that situation of the game each quarter, whether it was for only a few seconds or several minutes.
To summarize the last post, teams since 1998 spent anywhere from 16 to 40 percent of an entire game scoring or defending in the penalty, or about eight to 20 minutes. League averages were about 25 percent, or the length of a 12-minute quarter. It’s understandable if those marks seem small, but it’s been difficult for teams to stay penalty-free for entire quarters and nearly impossible for a complete game. As noted in a previous post, teams last season found themselves scoring or defending in that situation in over 80 percent of their quarters, 74 percent in first quarters, over 85 in the second to fourth, and 77 percent in overtimes. No team since 1998 scored or defended in the penalty in less than half of their first to fourth quarters, while seven teams had a frequency of 100 percent in fourth quarters.
More from FanSided
- Packers: 3 free agency mistakes Brian Gutekunst should already regret
- Cowboys give a masterclass in defense construction with Trevon Diggs extension
- Jim Harbaugh facing 4-game suspension over NCAA violations
- Predicting NBA’s Christmas Day Schedule: Lakers, Warriors highlight slate of postseason rematches
- 3 reasons the Blazers should trade Damian Lillard to the Heat and 2 reasons they shouldn’t
Both ways to get into the penalty equally contributed to those marks, either with four team fouls in the first ten minutes of a quarter, or one in the final two minutes if the first scenario didn’t occur. Committing less than four team fouls over ten minutes, or about 20 possessions, has been quite a task. Using all the team fouls committed since 1998, we can see how likely it has been to get into that version of the penalty, especially after being whistled for an early foul or two.
Below is a table splitting the time of a first to third team foul by every 30 seconds, and by quarter. For example (deep breath), teams hacking in the first quarter with 11 and half minutes or more remaining entered the two-minute mark with no fouls to give 54.5 percent of the time. That percentage increased to 78.9 when a second team foul was committed during the same time block. (Click to enlarge.)
Most percentages were based off decent samples, 100 to 7,500 fouls, over 19 years, but there was a sample size of only one for the third team foul in the first quarter with over 11:30 remaining, for example. In general, there’s much less fouling during first quarters compared to second to fourth quarters. If we use the same numbers to produce the chart above and create one for distributions, we see, among other things, that the third team foul in the first quarter tends to happen a few minutes later than the same team foul in the second to fourth quarters.
Of course, a team could go ten minutes hacking three or less times, but in the next possession find themselves in the penalty after committing a silly or questionable one. There’s also the foul to give used at the end of quarters, allowing teams to set their defense for the final few seconds of play. However, a small group of teams went entire games defending with zero minutes of penalty time. In an awkwardly-phrased tweet in December, I’d noted this happened to the Spurs. On one hand, it was indeed the first time that happened last season. However, given the drop in fouling in recent years, it was definitely not the first time in recent memory. Textbook overreaction on Twitter.
Below is a list of the teams to go an entire game without defending in the penalty, sorted by date. I also included teams that came close, just because.
Zero seconds of penalty time happened 25 times over the last 19 seasons and 16 times since 2012, but from 1998 to 2006 it only happened twice. A lot of instances happened in March and April, which seems odd.
It is still a question though how important staying out of the penalty is. Last season’s stats showed that teams were 2.3 points per 100 possessions better on offense with the penalty in their favor, but that’s largely because of fourth quarters and late-game fouling, and getting in the penalty by using the foul to give at the end of quarters could be beneficial to a defense.
Lastly, below is a Tableau dashboard with penalty frequency for every team since 1998.
All data used was from NBA.com’s play-by-play logs.