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Interesting study. To be honest, foul troubles in BB always gets on my nerves.

It´s pretty hard to establish any kind of correlation with foul tendencies.

The only conclusion I could arrive on 16 season playing BB, is that the hidden foul attribute is as powerful as it gets.

It really ignores the OD and ID of your players, your team defense, experience, you name it.

One could think that -yes- your rival´s offense has something to do with it, but I got proved wrong again and again, being my last frustration last wednesday on the B3 Cup: (38851282).

23 fouls to 7 (you can take off some late fouls on the last 20 secs), still I´m probably tripling my rival on fouls.
Definetively not a record, but it reminds you again that even if it looks that your teams can play Pistons-calibre D, nothing tops the hidden "Charles Oakley" foul attribute. When you like to chop some rival´s hands...just sit an prepair a comfy place at the bench for your starters.

And no, there´s nothing you can do about it (besides shipping your guys to neverland), a whopping 9 sub-levels of difference between my OD and his scoring, and 4 sub-leveles of difference between my ID and his inside scoring. With 4 rival players below 75.0 on MR and the fifth guy on 79.0, you could wonder how my rival could buy 85 points.

Well, all that difference meant nothing for the HA (Hid. At.)

My hitting gang always delivers (never injuring a rival though :-) and rarely is benefited with the same treatment of receiving the same amount of fouls they commit on offense. (not even close).

They turn an emotionless game into a lucky-fans-contest drama.
I´m not good at sampling and estimation (barely passed that exam in college) but it´s pretty easy to tell that the foul system is not logical at all.

HU-HA! Beware of the Hitting Gang!

Yer great example.

In fact, you would almost call that a 'perfect storm' of a game, whereby the fouls pretty much won the game for the opposition.

There is obviously a combination of factors which a) Led you to having significantly better team ratings in pretty much everything except offensive flow and inside scoring. b) Comparable individual ratings of players, yet c) a significant difference in fouls with a distinct lack of steals by your team.

I wonder. - 3-2 zone + Run n Gun. Stamina issue?

Maybe its the steals/turnovers that led to fast-break mismatches? I dont know if they even exist in the game engine... either way, that game is just. well. weird.

Thanks for doing some research on this topic. The results are really no surprise to me though.

However I am still convinced, that this random aggression stat needs to see a change. Those foul prone players were advertised as players that would draw a significant number of fouls in exchange (tit for tat) - if that was true (which it obv. isnt), those aggro players would have some benefit.

My hitting gang always delivers (never injuring a rival though :-) and rarely is benefited with the same treatment of receiving the same amount of fouls they commit on offense. (not even close).

If you're playing Run and Gun, your team hurries down the field and tries to jack up a quick outside shot. When you have shorter possessions and don't try to go inside, it's not at all unusual to expect that you may not draw a lot of fouls.

Yer its a funny one isnt it.

If it was a known value, like every other player-skill, then at least people could make the educated choice about buying-selling-keeping a player.

But at the same time, i actually find it an enjoyable and fun part of the game, finding out a newly drafted players aggressiveness. It does make the game challanging, and although its a feature of a player that isnt in line with all the other player-skills (that is, its not fricken visible!) - i actually kinda like it.

But overall i think it would be nice to know a player's aggressiveness.

However I am still convinced, that this random aggression stat needs to see a change. Those foul prone players were advertised as players that would draw a significant number of fouls in exchange (tit for tat)

Agree 100%
Got so annoyed about it a week ago, I made a really long post in my league forums.

Also really hate the insane, unrealistic foul differentials in certain games. I've had games where it's like 42-11 in FT attempts with both teams very evenly matched, both teams playing M2M & look inside... how is that even possible?? I've never seen a non Tim Donaghey officiated game that lopsided when both teams are attacking the basket.

Very nice analysis. The results are disappointing for managers with young fouling rookies. I had one myself and had to sell him because of the difficulty of training.

This fouling tendency would hardly be such a bother if minutes lost didn't correlate with training lost...

"But overall i think it would be nice to know a player's aggressiveness."

Looking a player's history, I find, is a good indicator of a player's tendency to foul. If you are looking a starter, especially one with a track record, I think a player who fouls close to 3 times a game, on average, is a reliable red flag.

Of course, it gets more complicated -- I am convinced that a LI will draw more fouls, and that weaker players will foul better players just trying to keep up -- but a player's history reveals his hidden aggression traits.

Yer thats what i tend to do as well. Player X's average fouls over last season.

Ive decided that im going to do the analysis for players who play Centre/Power Forward. Ive just been thinking about it, and, maybe guards wasnt the best way to start. Maybe guards are a much more complex natured fouling position.

But maybe Centre/Forward is more simple? I dunno. I will do it for my own curiosity really, because I have two PF's who fouls a lot, a backup C who fouls a lot, but another C who hardly ever fouls at all. I just thought of it watching a recent game of mine. So yer, ill only do a smlal pool, maybe 25 players, just to get an indication. Shouldnt take long. But ill Use Shot blocking and ID instead of OD and H.

Ok so i quickly did some analysis of C/PF's. no luck. No correlation between ID/SB and fouls per 48 mins.

I started to look at my own players, as mentioned before. Ive got this C, whom has been my backup C for a few seasons now. Last season i trained a PF, who played at C most of the time, so my normal backup C got pushed to PF, OR, didnt play along side this new trainee.

anyways, ive noticed that my backup C's fouls per 48 has gone from like, 6.5 a few seasons ago, to nearly half that for this season.

This guy is 27, hasnt received any training this season or last season, yet there is a dramitic difference in his FP48.

I know its only one example, but I truely feel, that, because he is playing alongside weaker players now, he is no longer the 'weakest defensive link', whereas before, when he was backup, he invariably was. Like with offence, no matter what tactic you use, the game engine will favour the player best suited to make a shot ....... and perhaps part of this is to target the weakest defensive player, and as such, he fouls more?

anyways, statistically, I couldnt find any link between nromal skillset and fouls. . Maybe there is some aggression factor that is in the game. Who knows.

I decided to introduce a randomized 'Aggression' number, for each player, value 1-5. totally random, but equal distribution.

Random Aggression value correlated with FP48 +0.16
well at least i got a positive correlation!

I gave my aggression statistic more of a bell-curve distribution (that is, more players have an 'average' aggression level, and less players have the extreme's) - I also increased this value distibution to match BB stat ranges 0 -20.
Doing this, i increased the correlation to about 0.25,

I don't see the point in this. obviously a totaly random value can't correlate with anything. You could have called that random skill fluffy candiness and still would have gotten the same result. You obtaining a non zero value is due to your small sample size.
But good job on the rest though. There really doesn't seem to be a big effect of any of the visible skills.