Correct Team Offensive and Defensive Strategies Regarding Getting Fouled and Fouling

DEFENSIVE QUALITY IN GENERAL
The best team defense is characterized by high effort, high intensity, high energy, and high skill. These characteristics will produce high rankings in any or all of the following key defensive parameters of winning basketball games:

KEY DEFENSIVE PARAMETERS
1. Opponent Effective Field Goal Percentage
2. Opponent Free Throws / Field Goals Attempted
3. Defensive Rebounding Percentage (of available rebounds)
4. Opponent Turnover Percentage (% of opponent possessions ending in turnovers. Turnovers include clock violations)
5. Disruption of Opponent Playmaking (prevention of assists etc.)

NOTES
Number (1) Is the opponent scoring per shot percentage adjusted to weight three-point shots and two-point shots correctly.

Number (2) is, in plain English, a ratio between opponent free throws and opponent field goal attempts.

Number (4) Opponent turnovers, include opponent shot clock violations, which high quality defenses get much more often than do lower quality defenses.

In this report we are focused like a laser on (1) and (2). Of all of the components shown, (1) the effective opponent field goal percentage, is the most important one of all; it is the one most highly correlated with overall defensive quality and results.

(2) is less correlated than (1) with defensive quality in general. But, and this is a big but, (2) is very highly correlated with teams that have the very highest quality defenses, and therefore it is highly correlated with teams that win the Quest. Simply put, if for whatever reason your defense is a high fouling rate one, you will most likely not be winning any Championships, even if you manage to win a few playoff games.

Also, because #(2) can be directly controlled by a team, it can be used to improve performance in the even more important but somewhat less directly controllable #(1).

Other Quest Reports, past and future, have and will deal with (3),(4), and (5).

CORRECT OFFENSIVE STRATEGY WITH RESPECT TO EARNING FREE THROWS
Some basketball people simply believe that on offense, the more free throws earned, the better the offense. However, looking at this objectively, there is not anywhere near enough proof that this assertion is always or automatically correct. It is very clear that you should try to avoid being well below average in this, but whether you should be above average depends on your playmaking and shooting.

The reason you should avoid being substantially below the League average on this is simply that any offense, regardless of quality, is easier to defend the more predictable it is. And if you are below average in the free throw versus shot attempt ratio, it means you are not aggressively driving into the paint enough to test the interior defenses enough, which makes your offense too predictable and therefore makes it easier for the opponent to defend your playmaking and shooting.

However, if you are an above average playmaking and/or an above average shooting team, you will be to some extent shooting yourself in the foot and squandering your offensive edge if you overweight driving to the rack for fouls. So, if you have a high quality offense in general, you are advised to keep your offense between a little below average and a little above average in the free throw attempts versus field goal attempts ratio.

Always remember, do NOT attempt to be way above average in free throw attempts versus field goal attempts if you have a high quality offense. And remember the other side of that coin: you can not simply by over weighting driving for fouls achieve a high quality offense. This is actually a dumb mistake. You can't depend on a combination of interior defending lapses, referees calling every foul, and making most of your free throws to make up for a general lack of offensive quality. To have any chance at all to contend for a Ring, you MUST have a high quality offense that is NOT dependent (for scoring) on driving into the paint a lot more than other teams do.

On the other hand, if you have a poor point guard, and/or you have poor playmaking, and/or you have poor shooting, you can make up for one or more of these deficiencies to some extent by over weighting driving into the paint and earning more free throws. The worse the quality of your offense, the more you should resort to driving to the rack and trying to earn free throws more than most teams do. But again, although if you are a medium or lower quality offense overall you can force a better offensive result by over weighting drives to the rack, and although you might possibly win an extra playoff game or two by doing so, you can not and will not become a contender for a Championship just by doing this.

The important thing is to calibrate the overall quality of your "field goal offense" with to what extent you drive the ball into the paint. The higher the quality of your overall and of your field goal offense, the less you should overweight driving into the paint.

CORRECT DEFENSIVE STRATEGY WITH RESPECT TO FOULING AND YIELDING FREE THROWS
Let's first take a time out to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding "defensive quality". Specifically, defensive quality refers to key components of defending, including defensive awareness/recognition, defensive rotation, man to man defending, and pick and roll defending.

Getting back to the specific topic of the day, the accepted theory is that on defense, the fewer free throws by the opponent, the better the defense is. This is the converse of the simple offensive theory regarding free throws discussed above. In other words, the simple theory is that on offense you want to get a lot of free throws while on defense you don't want your opponent to be getting a lot of free throws. (You want a high ratio on offense but a low ratio on defense).

The defensive version of the simple theory is more correct than the offensive version. That is, it is usually the case that the lower the ratio between opponent free throws and opponent field goal attempts you allow, the better your defense is. This is because there is a premium in the Quest for the Ring put on ability to defend energetically, skillfully, and intelligently without fouling. So given the choice between trusting your defending skills to prevent scores and relying much more on aggressive defending up to and including fouling the shooter, it is almost always better for serious Quest contenders to rely more on the energy, skill, and intelligence and less on the aggression and fouling. In other words, the more a team is a true contender in the Quest for the Ring, the more it will see fouling the shooter as a last resort and not a first resort.

If on the other hand you are not even remotely a contending team, and you know that you are below average in defensive quality, there is no reason not to substitute aggression for quality to the extent it is possible to do so. So in this special situation (a team which by definition is far from being competitive in the Quest) you should not worry about how low you might be in the ratio of opponent free throws versus opponent field goal attempts. That is, unlike if you are a contender and/or a high quality defense, don't worry about trying to minimize opponent free throws.

However, be advised that you will automatically lose certain games while doing an aggressive, high fouling defense. Specifically, you will lose a big majority of the games where the referees are calling a "tight" game, and when the referees are ready to call a higher total number of fouls than they normally do. This "automatic loss" problem is one of the reasons why a high fouling strategy is seldom the correct one for a contending team to follow, since even one automatic loss in a playoff series is dangerous.

THE CHOICE BETWEEN FIELD GOAL PERCENTAGE ALLOWED AND FREE THROWS ALLOWED FOR LOWER SKILLED DEFENSIVE TEAMS
The best defenses feature BOTH a low opponent effective field goal percentage and a LOW free throws versus field goals attempted ratio. So true quality defensive teams will never and should never even think in the either or terms discussed in this section.

But what if your defenders are not good enough to provide both of these objectives at the same time? An important and interesting question is: Which is better for a Quest for the Ring contender to try to get, assuming hypothetically that only one or the other is possible: low opponent effective field goal percentage or low opponent free throws versus field goals attempted ratio?

The real question is slightly different, because opponent field goal percentage is not as directly controllable as is the opponent free throw ratio. A defensive squad has almost total control over the latter, actually. Hypothetically, you could insure a ratio of zero if you didn't even try to defend so that you never fouled, and you could insure a ratio of 1 if you intentionally fouled on every single play. The relevant question is: "Exactly how often should we be fouling, compared to the average League rate of fouling"?

Opponent effective field goal percentage is a performance measure that is much more a dependent type of variable. What you end up with is dependent on the particular things you choose to do or not do on defense. In the present discussion, the correct way to frame the choice is: assuming your defense is not good enough overall to have both a low free throws versus shots attempted and a low opponent effective field goal percentage at the same time, should you attempt to minimize opponent free throws by making it top priority to defend well without fouling, or should you do almost the opposite via an intentional high fouling rate strategy?

The fist thing to realize is that between the two, getting the lowest opponent effective field goal percentage possible is more important in the Quest. Moreover, it turns out that it is possible to gain a lower percentage than you would other wise have by intentionally sacrificing your performance in the free throws allowed, by intentionally adopting a high fouling defense.

The demonstration of all this was provided by the 2009 Denver Nuggets, which was a unique type of team that you won't see very often in the NBA: high skill but lacking in direction and overall quality, both on offense and defense actually. This team intentionally used a hard charging, aggressive, high fouling type of defense, and it is clear that the Nuggets reduced the effective field goal percentage of their opponents as a result of all the extra fouling. This happened both due to the general intimidation effect of the Nuggets' defensive strategy, and also due to stops that were actually uncalled fouls.

So the Nuggets "sacrificed" any advantage you can get from low fouling in favor of intentionally using high fouling to indirectly force a reduced opponent effective field goal percentage. This strategy did work to some extent, since the Nuggets were the 8th best defensive team in the NBA, despite the fact that virtually all professional basketball people predicted before the season began that the Nuggets defensively were going to be a well below average team.

On the other hand, although the Nuggets, thanks in part to a long string of lucky breaks, were able to go 10-6 in the playoffs, the Nuggets defense as designed was ultimately not good enough to be a real contender in the Quest for the Ring.

So if your team is defensively not getting it done, you might consider forgetting about trying to limit fouling and you might attempt to get the same reduction in opponent field goal percentage that the Nuggets received from high fouling. Although you can benefit from doing this, don't expect you can win a Championship by doing it, or even to get as close to the Championship game as the Nuggets did. I warn you, the Nuggets needed a string of luck to reach the West Final in 2009, so don't get carried away estimating how much benefit the Nuggets received from the high fouling.

Although the Nuggets chose correctly between the two given their situation, and although the effective field goal percentage of their opponents was lower than it would have been had the Nuggets not been a hard fouling team, the overall Nuggets defensive result was not enough to make them truly comparable with the very best 2009 defenses. Which is not surprising because again, it is much better for a defense to be both a low fouling AND a low effective field goal percentage allowed team.

Another way of looking at what the Nuggets' high fouling accomplished is to say that it was able to transform what would have been, League-wide, an average quality defense into an above average quality one, but not into a way above average one and not into a Championship type of defense.

Specifically, the Nuggets were only the 8th best team defensively in the NBA, whereas the Lakers were 6th. There was a relatively small but critical gap between the two teams. On offense, incidentally, there was almost the same size gap, again in favor of the Lakers.

WHAT IF YOU TRY THE REVERSE OF WHAT THE 2009 NUGGETS DID?
If you do not have high defensive quality but you nevertheless go all out for minimizing ratio of opponent free throws versus opponent shots, and see where the chips fall with respect to opponent effective field goal percentage, you will most likely not be rewarded as much compared to the reverse approach.

Defensively, the 2009 Toronto Raptors are an example of a team the opposite of the 2009 Nuggets. This was a team lacking overall defensive quality that, consciously or not, tried to directly minimize opponent effective field goal percentage while at the same time minimizing fouling and the resulting opponent free throws. While the Raptors were indeed one of the best teams in the NBA with respect to fewest opponent free throws allowed, they were well below average in opponent field goal percentage allowed. The net result of this mix was that the overall Raptors defense was ranked way down at 22nd among the 30 teams, whereas the Nuggets, with the opposite defensive approach with respect to free throws, were the 8th.

Although the Nuggets were going to be better than the Raptors defensively regardless of strategies either team would choose, the Nuggets clearly got more mileage from their defensive strategy mix than did the Raptors. In other words, the Raptors did not have to be as far behind the Nuggets defensively as they were.

SUMMARY OF FOULING STRATEGY
Teams that are overall lower quality than the best defensive teams may not be able to simultaneously achieve a low opponent effective field goal percentage and a low opponent free throw attempt versus field goals attempted ratio. If your team is so limited, there is an advantage in going for the lower opponent field goal percentage indirectly, using a high fouling defense.

Incidentally, high fouling sometimes works not because it should work under the "principals" of basketball, but primarily due to the limitations of referees and to certain human psychological weaknesses. Like life, basketball is not completely fair or logical.

If your overall defensive quality is not truly high, concentrating directly on minimizing opponent effective field goal percentage while simultaneously maintaining a low fouling rate will often not be as successful.

On the other hand, if you are truly serious in the Quest for the Ring and/or you do have high real defensive quality on your team, it is not an either or question. You do not have to and you most definitely should not choose to intentionally have a high fouling rate. Rather, you have what it takes to simultaneously be a low fouling and a low opponent field goal percentage team at the same time.

Virtually all teams that won the Quest more so from defense than from offense were high quality, low fouling teams, low opponent field goal percentage allowed teams. Moreover, among teams that won the Quest more so from offense than defense, rarely if ever would you see the defensive side of those teams intentionally running a high fouling strategy.