[Thinking Like Morey] Kevin Martin, Kyle Lowry, and the Value of Fouls

echu888 · Feb 21, 2010

Htown57 said:

Sadly, offensive fouls do not count towards the team total--only "loose ball" and "defensive" fouls do.

Of course, charges drawn ARE the basic equivalent of a steal, thereby creating "extra" possessions, which are perhaps the most important stat in basketball for reasons i won't get into now...
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Once you're in the bonus, do you get free throws for drawn charges? That could still have an effect on the point total beyond the "extra" possession factor.

Htown57 · Feb 21, 2010

echu888 said:

Once you're in the bonus, do you get free throws for drawn charges? That could still have an effect on the point total beyond the "extra" possession factor.
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Nope, no free throws. Here's the rule:

Section VII--Offensive Fouls
A personal foul assessed against an offensive player which is neither an elbow, punching or flagrant foul shall be penalized in the following manner:
(1) No points can be scored by the offensive team
(2) The offending player is charged with a personal foul
(3) The offending team is not charged with a team foul
EXCEPTION: Rule 3--Section I--a. No penalty free throws are awarded.
(4) The ball is awarded to the offended team out-of-bounds on the sideline at the nearest spot where play was interrupted but no nearer the baseline than the free throw line extended
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That being said, taking charges is still awesome because it does "create" possessions, and that's a really big deal. I don't have the numbers for this right now (again, I should dig them up and give this its own thread), but the team that has the most possessions is more likely to win (duh). So charges, like offensive rebounds and forced turnovers, are valuable.

The rockets average 93.5 possessions per game and score 101.1 pts. That's 1.08 points/posession. So, each time Chuck Hayes draws a charge, thereby creating a possession/negating an opponent possession, that nets the Rockets an extra point or so. Useful stuff.

Again, this is common knowledge (taking charges = good, duh), but i find the numbers behind it interesting.

nebula955 · Feb 21, 2010

Great! Except now that Kevin plays for the rockets he just not get as many fouls...

dschwab · Feb 23, 2010

One of the best posts since " [Statistical Analysis] Big games according to Luis Scola "

Nicely done.

towW · Feb 23, 2010

One negative: If refs aren't call fouls for the Rockets they aren't shooting FTs a la hack-a-Yao. It's even more successful on Yao than it is on Shaq because they never call them.

thcdrummer007 · Feb 23, 2010

JCDenton said:

It's also hard to play team defense when your center is a 7'6 marshmellow that regularly gets posterized by midgets. I hope we get STAT this offseason and the let Yao go in a sign and trade for a true defensive center that can intimidate ppl.
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Like who???

canton1022 · Feb 23, 2010

Hey guys I looked for a thread to post this but I couldnt find one. But I was looking at the Kings forum sactown royalty on yahoo and these people posted a thread about letting landry go because they think he cant play defense. I personally think Landry was good enough on D and I was wondering if you guys think Morey could resign Landry? Or is that a long shot?

Htown57 · Feb 23, 2010

JCDenton said:

It's also hard to play team defense when your center is a 7'6 marshmellow that regularly gets posterized by midgets. I hope we get STAT this offseason and the let Yao go in a sign and trade for a true defensive center that can intimidate ppl.
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Do you watch the games?

As for your only "argument": shotblockers get dunked on. It happens. If you don't get "posterized", you aren't trying. Dikembe knew this.

The main difference between this year's mediocre defensive team and the past 4 years' GREAT defensive team is Yao. He changes shots and turns back drives.

Yao does have some defensive deficiencies (closing out on jump-shooting bigs, for example), but by and large, he is a high-impact defensive player.

jopatmc · Feb 23, 2010

Let's trade for Maggette and Bosh and run out a starting unit of:

Lowry
Martin
Maggette
Yao
Bosh

Think they would get in the bonus early?

Easy · Feb 23, 2010

jopatmc said:

Let's trade for Maggette and Bosh and run out a starting unit of:

Lowry
Martin
Maggette
Yao
Bosh

Think they would get in the bonus early?
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The All Foul-drawing team:

Lowry
Martin
Wade
LeBron
Yao

6th man: Maggette

That's a little undersized. But that team would last about 4 hours each game.

Corpusfan · Feb 24, 2010

What an excellent thread. Nice job quantifying what we know is true and explaining it clearly. Makes me even more excited about the team getting Martin, and about getting Yao and Lowry back on the floor. Question: Where do the often-mentioned offseason sign-and-trade targets, Bosh and Stoudemire, rank in this regard?

BackNthDay · Feb 24, 2010

ind0fo0 said:

And picked up Martin, who draws even more. What's your point?

Great write-up... This creates another legit argument to start Lowry next season. Drawing fouls early each quarter is crucial- more time in the bonus.
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Let's remember Lowry is going against backup point guards. Down the stretch in the playoffs, ref's swallow their whistles and good teams will force Lowry to take that 40% jump shot and trust it is a lot more difficult in the playoffs. So wake up and hope that AB learns to draw fouls from watching Lowry, because we all trust AB to take jumpers than Lowry.

hotdamn · Feb 24, 2010

Great analysis, add the fact that we have Battier and Hayes drawing charges as well...more Free throws for us and more foul trouble for them!!!!!

Al Capone · Feb 24, 2010

This is all dependent on whether or not we are getting calls, and I think we all know Stern and his goons (Tony Brothers, Joey Crawford etc.) are all biased against Houston.

Mcgrady4ever · Feb 24, 2010

very good post!!
But no one would like to watch free throws for the whole game

MONON · Feb 24, 2010

Mcgrady4ever said:

very good post!!
But no one would like to watch free throws for the whole game
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If you're winning 70% of those games, you won't notice the extra length. It's like a bad 2 hour movie goes on forever, while a good 3 hour movie is over before you know it.

httx713 · Feb 24, 2010

Htown57 said:

In the wake of the Kevin Martin trade, a lot has been said about his ability to draw fouls, and the positive impact that has on our team's offense. I figured I'd do some digging into the tangible, statistical effects that has on a team's success. Get into the Mind of Morey, so to speak. I'll divide this up into two sections--"Fouls are good" and "we will draw tons of fouls."

SECTION ONE--FOULS ARE GOOD, DUH:

Legendary Coach Dean Smith once said "The key statistic is still to get to the foul line." Fundamentally, he's right There are plenty of reasons why this is the case:

FIRST--getting to the line is the most efficient way to use a possession.

Take the example of Kyle Lowry. He's a 40.6% shooter this year. This means an average Lowry shot from the field nets .802 points. When fouled, Lowry is an 80% free throw shooter. So each time Lowry gets fouled in the act of shooting nets him an average of 1.6 points It's clear why Kyle Lowry seeks out contact, and why Morey loves him for it: Statistically, Lowry is likely to produce twice as many points on a possession where he gets fouled than on a possession where he takes any other kind of shot...and that's without even factoring in the chance at an "and-1".

Obviously, Lowry is an extreme example, given his poor shooting from the field and good free throw shooting. But even given the league averages (about 46% from the field and 77% from the line), the average player will produce 1.54 points per trip to the line, versus .92 points per shot from the field. Even factoring in 3 point shots, an average shooter taking a 3 (at 36.7%) produces an average of only 1.1 points/shot. In any event, getting to the line produces more points than any other use of a possession, And it isn't even close.

SECOND--The Bonus

Everyone--Bullard, Worrell, Morey--has made a comment about Martin's foul drawing getting the Rockets in the bonus earlier. But what is the actual statistical effect of that?

These numbers are old (from 05 i think), but they also demonstrate the joys of having lots of foul-drawing players:

As you can see, when in the bonus, the average NBA team produces 6 more points per hundred possessions. The best teams according to this metric produce around 10 more points per hundred possessions when in the bonus. The Rockets, as I will show below, stand poised to be one of those teams. While that may not seem like a lot, It's often the difference between winning and losing. A good "bonus" team (a team which spends a lot of time in the bonus, and draws and converts a lot of fouls during that time), will spend upwards of 30 percent of their possessions averaging close to .1 points per possession than they otherwise would.

Given the average team uses about 96 posessions per game, having a third of those be posessions "in the bonus" nets us somewhere near 3 extra ppg. Over the course of a season, that's quite a few wins.

THIRD--The ability to draw fouls has a number of other effects that are difficult to quantify.

From getting opponents in foul trouble to breaking scoring droughts to silencing a hostile crowd, drawing fouls has a myriad of positive effects on a team.

CONCLUSION: Based on shooting efficiency, the bonus, and other factors, it's obvious that a team should try to draw fouls, and acquire players who are skilled in that regard.

SECTION TWO: WE WILL DRAW FOULS. LOTS OF FOULS

We've established that the ability to draw fouls radically increases scoring efficiency and gets, in effect, cheap points from the bonus, among other ancillary benefits. So will we be able to take advantage of these factors?

HELL YES.

Let's look first at Kevin Martin. Martin draws fouls like Chacho's, the House of Pies, and Whataburger draw drunk people at 3AM. To quote a slam article on Kevin Martin:

"Martin was fouled on an unbelievable 21% of his field goal attempts last season; Only Dwight Howard, Marc Gasol, Shaq, Gerald Wallace, and Devin Harris were fouled at a higher rate. (LeBron was at 19%, Wade was at 17%, Roy was at 14%, Durant was at 13%, and Bryant was at 12%, for some points of reference.)"

Umm...wow. Combine that with the fact that he is a career 85% free throw shooter, and we're talking lots of cheap, easy, efficient and delicious points.

BUT WAIT, THERE's MORE--Kyle Lowry draws fouls on 19.6 percent of his shots(more than lebron)...and is an 80% free throw shooter.

AND STILL MORE--Yao gets whacked on 20.7% of his attempts, and shoots 84.5% from the line.

For those playing the home game, that's 3(three) players on our roster who are top-ten in the league at drawing fouls, all of whom shoot more than 80% from the line. Given the information in section one (uhhh...fouls are good, mmkay?), Morey has built a team which, especially combined with Adelman's offense, has the potential to be mind-blowingly efficient. Take all the advantages in the first section, and supercharge them to consider the skill of our players at drawing fouls and shooting foul shots. In Morey We Trust.

Hope y'all find this interesting. I understand it's nothing novel (subjectively, this is common basketball sense), but the numbers certainly give a better idea why Morey values players like Lowry, Martin, and Yao so highly. If you actually had the stomach to read all this, I hope you enjoy. :grin:
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I love your charts and comparisons BUT on tiny little shrivel small puny molecule detail; The NBA does not want the Rockets getting to the line ie. Yao, Hakeem, Clyde, Charles, Francis memba' them They never got to the line because the NBA has always refereed the ROCKETS stars differently.. go back to the head to head games played against UTAH, SPURS, MAVS, SUNS, LAKERS and when they played the FINALS,, didn't David Stern and the rest of the league wanted the Knicks to win it all and a young Shaq the bigger star in comparison to Hakeem to be crowned champs... So your charts and numbers look wonderful and I hope it turns out that way but I Just do not trust the NBA refs and the League.. K-mart was fouled several times against the Pacers and only made it to the line 8 times which is great but he was fouled more than that. The next day West went to the line 1 more time than the entire rockets team...

TManiAC · Feb 24, 2010

Where is Corey Maggette in this discussion. He should be MVP based on these metrics.

That Boi Oz · Feb 24, 2010

Good post thanks for the breakdown.

blink52y · Feb 24, 2010

Great Post!
on a different note-
I really hope we will start kyle and bring ab from the bench.

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[Thinking Like Morey] Kevin Martin, Kyle Lowry, and the Value of Fouls

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[Thinking Like Morey] Kevin Martin, Kyle Lowry, and the Value of Fouls

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