What...no faith? The rage is all transparency, baby. Depends on what side of the curtain has the greater lift.
MORE ON THE INCESSANT FOULING: Here's how many minutes it would take each player on the Pistons to foul out on average- Player/ Minutes to foul out Tay 175 AI 155 Rip 86 Sheed 69 Stuck 58 WHerr 53 ------ regulation game------ Afflalo 47 JMax 45 Kwame 43 Dyess 42 Amir 31 Notice that we have 5 players who can't even average a full regulation NBA game without fouling out. The bottom 4 are comprised of all of our big men except for Sheed. This highlights how clean our top 4 play. Tay's infrequent fouling is pretty amazing when you think about it. Sheed's too. It may also highlight how much presure is being put on our bigs as the last line of defense. I'm not going to draw any conclusions from Afflalo's number because he is routinely put on the best players and is often inserted for defensive possessions only, which will really skew his foul frequency upward.
In High school I had to check Andre Rison when he played at Flint Northwestern. I fouled out 2 minutes into the 2nd half.
He dunked on me when I was young and impressionable. ...I cheered when Left-Eye burned down his crib.
They would need to get an electric whistles... they would run out of air in their lungs due to continuous whistling
The easiest solution would just be to have a continous whistle sound and let them hit the mute button when no foul is occuring.
PLAYER GROWTH/ DECLINE FROM 2007-2008 SEASON. Took a look at our players and compared them to what they did last year. I'll only point out the material differences. [Shooting % shown as eFG (mixing 3's and 2's), rebounding shown as % of available, assists shown as assists per 48, FTA's also per 48.] Stuckey- has improved his shooting % a lot from .406 to .488. His shot selection is identical, but his jump shot % is up over 100 basis points from .345 to .451. His inside FG% is also up a ton, from .477 to .533. Surprisingly, the rate at which he gets fouled is actually down by about 2% and 1 FTA per game. His assists are up slightly. This change in outside shooting % is likely responsible for his improved inside %, as defenders can't sag off him any more. Great development. Iverson- totally different situation for him and apples to oranges comparison, but his FG% is down from .488 to .442. His FTA's are down from 11.2 to 7.3. His assists are down. He's both sacrificing time with the ball in his hands and he's worse from an efficiency standpoint too. He's still good obviously, but he has high standards. Maybe this is good news, because there is still upside possible from him going forward. Rip- FG% down from .515 to .482. FTA's up. Assists down. Shooting slump at the beginning of the season still holding his averages down. But even though he's not knocking them down like we're used to seeing, he's still more efficient than AI from the perimeter. AA- Like Stuck, another huge FG% improvement, from .432 to .512. He's taking a higher % of jump shots this year, but hitting them at .474 vs. .390 last year. When he gets inside, he's shooting .643 vs. .487 last year. Same situation as Stuck? His outside shooting is opening up his drives? His foul drawing is about half of what it was last year and his assists are down too. But for a defensive player, this is spectacular that he could improve his offensive efficiency so much. Tay- Everything is about the same. Minor variations, but nothing substantial and they vary both ways. Assists are down 16%, probably a result of playing with drivers like Stuck and AI and not getting those easy assists where he'd throw it to CB or Rip for an immediate J. Sheed- Shooting is about the same. He's increased his outside shot selection from 85% to 89%. Foul drawing is down about 33%. Assists are down, but in line with the team in general. Not much else has changed, still a poor offensive rebounder and a stong defensive rebounder. Dyess- Shooting has improved from .488 to .517. The difference is that he's hitting his jumpers at a .448 clip vs. only .409 last year. Dyess is drawing fouls at a slightly greater rate than last year and his assists are actually higher than last year. Overall, more than we could have hoped for from an aging big man. Amir- FG% higher from .558 to .586. Can't really get any higher than this, because he's being so selective. He's rebounding at the same rates as last year. His foul drawing rate has actually dropped significantly, probably because he's playing with and against starters. Fouling giving rate is unsustainable if he wants to maintain his position in the rotation. Maxiell- Decrease in FG% from .538 to .516, but still very good. He's rebounding on the offensive end a little better, but 20% worse on the defensive boards. He's drawing fouls at a lower rate than he used to, but is getting more attempts, so more FTA/48, from 4.6 to 5.2. FG% improvement summary- Stuckey +.082 Afflalo +.080 Dyess +.029 Amir +.028 Sheed +.010
FREE THROWS- After seeing Sheed's guady 3.6 to 1 threeball to FT ratio, I was shocked at how few FTA's he's actually getting. 44 free throws this year in 1,089 minutes played for Sheed. Will Bynum is at 30 FT's and he's only played 195 minutes. Kwame- 52 FT's in 434 minutes. Maxiell- 69 FT's in 566 minutes. Afflalo- 43 FT's in 655 minutes. AI, Stucky, Tay, and Rip all have 2 to 5 times more attempts than Sheed. The other stat that is highly correlated with playing near the basket is offensive rebounds. Sheed has 28 of those, the same number as Stuckey. Tay, Max, Amir, Dyess, and Kwame all have significantly more. About 3 times more for Tay, Max, and Amir. Could this be part of our problems? Is Sheed playing any more disciplined under MC as he was under Flip, a fella that he didn't respect at all (hence the messing up of the desk on a daily basis)?
This FT realization also made me wonder if any NBA players in history have ever finished a season with > 100 blocks and less than 100 FTA's... as Sheed could possibly do this year. The 3 most likely players I thought of were Sean Bradley, Manut Bol, and Georgh Muresan. Bradley and Muresan had plenty of seasons with way over 100 blocks, but their free throws were also very high. 278 FTA's by Muresan one year. But it looks like Manut Bol did it every year of his career. In 85-86 he had 397 blocks, 86 FTA's, and 1 three-point attempt.
That would be like calling Manut Bol soft. That guy went into boxing and hockey after his NBA career, 2 of the toughest sports in the world.
