Quote:
Originally Posted by elstunar
this has always bugged me as well...eagerly awaiting response
Okay so you have essentially two arguments, Foxwood Friends and Tskillz, if you only were able to pick one of the two FF viewpoint imo is much more correct.
I definitely don't agree with the assessment that a basket in the 1st quarter is not worth as much as a basket in the 4q. It may be easier to score (and this is also dubious) in the 1q than in the 4q but last I checked 2 points was worth 2 points no matter when it was scored.
In general you are always better off leaving a player in or briefly taking them out and then bringing them back in vs having them sit for substantial
minutes to avoid them fouling out.
What tskillz is saying regarding playing 32 mins with crunch time included vs playing 32 mins of non-crunch time mins being not equal may be correct. However this is not usually the way it works, in general you have teams sacrificing 8-12 mins of non crunch time to insure there players are available in the ~5 mins of crunch time.
This is what FF is referring to by stating they are guaranteeing a player sits out. Which I wholeheartedly agree with.
There are a few exceptions;
When a player's role is generally to play defense and especially to protect the paint. Its very hard for these players to play optimally if they are in foul trouble, this is also true if a guy has the role of stopper someone like Bruce Bowen in his prime etc.
I also disagree with the notion that we should ignore past performance on how likely a player is to foul, players do have historical foul rates and yes you should always consider context but it would be foolish to completely ignore these rates.
A player like LeBron James has a very very low foul rate, I can remember two occasions this year where he picked up 2 quick fouls and played reduced minutes. In both games he ended the game with 3 fouls, I blogged about one of these games when CLE played at LAC.
Another issue that is kind of glossed over in all of this but is actually VERY REAL is that refs are less likely to call a foul on a player who is in foul trouble than they are when he is not in foul trouble. At the MIT sloan Sports Analytics Conference someone presented a paper on omission bias that clearly outlined this
Here is a link
http://celticshub.com/2010/03/06/bias-in-officiating/