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... players have to adjust to game circumstances, and those
adjustments will affect the numbers.
It's like, if a baseball player gets a one-out single and then gets
thrown out trying to steal second base. If the next guy gets a
double, you can say that if the guy hadn't been thrown out trying to
steal second, the team would have scored a run. Except that we all
know the pitcher would have pitched a whole lot differently if he had
pitched to the batter with one out and a man on first than he did
pitching to him with two outs and the bases empty. So you can say it,
but we all know that it isn't necessarily true.
If the refs call walking on your spin move twice in the first five
minutes, you're going to adjust. If they call touch fouls on the
perimeter, you're going to adjust. If they let you hack the bejesus
out the guy you're defending on the wing, or mud wrestle the guy
you're defending on the blocks, you're going to by God keep on doing
it. If they call charges when you flop, you're going to keep on
flopping, and if they don't call charges when you flop, you're going
to stand on your feet and quit trying to look like Shane Battier or
Greg Paulus.
Statistics like foul differential tend to self-correct toward the
mid-point over time. You can make certain general statement, like
teams will commit fewer fouls, over time, when they play zone defenses
than when they play an attacking man-to-man, but otherwise, things
tend to be dependent on circumstances.
Even the argument that the Dookies try to peddle about foul
differentials being determined by late game fouling is largely
baloney. In a game with a 35-second shot clock and a three-point
line, the number of games where you have the inexorable late-game
march to the foul line is pretty small. The effect that phenomenon is
going to have on foul differential numbers over the course of an
entire season is very modest. 20 years ago, before the shot clock,
when the last five minutes of every even semi-close game was a march
to the foul line was different. But nowadays, fouling, if it happens
at all, doesn't usually start till the last minute or so of the game.
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