Has The NBA Gone Soft? Testing the Metta World Peace Theorem

There has been a lot of talk lately about how the NBA these days is “soft.” Former players have commented on the idea that in today’s game players quickly look to the referee to blow their whistle, rather than play through physical contact. Players often claim that “back in the day” the league was much tougher and less fouls were called. Thus, for my next analysis I will put this hypothesis to the test. To do so, I will conduct an analysis centered around the comments made to The Los Angeles Times earlier this season by Metta World Peace. He strongly suggests that the league was much more rough when he came into it. Note that I used R to manipulate and graph all the data you see on this post. Below is an excerpt of his comments regarding foul calls:

“It’s no longer a man’s game. It’s a baby’s game. There’s softies everywhere. Everybody’s soft. Nobody’s hard no more. So you just deal with it, you adjust, and that’s it.”

-Metta World Peace

• We will use this this statement to form a hypothesis and test it with what we will tentatively call the Metta World Peace Theorem of Softer NBA (MWP Theorem):

MORE FOUL CALLS = SOFTER NBA

The Who?

• Before we construct the hypothesis let me help you become acquainted with Metta World Peace:

• We see here that Metta World Peace was the 16th selection in the first round to the Chicago Bulls in 1999.
• This gives us a starting date to look at and is the last bit of information we need to form our hypothesis and start the analysis.
• We will be testing the following hypothesis:

Around the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the NBA was much more open to physicality and intensity because fouls were called much less than they are today.

Important Notes:

1. I refer to each season by its later number. Example: 1999-2000 season is referred to as the 2000 season.
2. Keep in mind that the 1999(1998-1999) season and 2012(2011-2012) season were both shortened by labor strikes. Thus, I will start at the 2000 season and drop the 2012 season for any of the average stats because neither the presence nor absence of that outlier seem to have affected the outcome when fitted.  Also, the 2016(2015-2016) season has not concluded yet so statistics from this season will NOT be included.
3. This analysis does not involve the Jordan Era or any of the other claims made by older generation players. Thus, this analysis only concludes the physicality and intensity in the NBA during the years 2000-2015, which is when Metta World Peace played most of his career.
4. MWP Theorem is not an actual Theorem.

The What?

We will start by looking at the average personal fouls per game in the NBA since 2000:

• As you can see, the exact opposite of our hypothesis is displayed on this graph. The average amount of fouls per season trends downward as we approach 2016. But before we conclude anything lets look at total volumes of Fouls taking the first 4 full seasons and the last 4 full seasons from our data:

Fouls First Full 4 (2000-2004): 9,027

Fouls Last Full 4 (2011,2013-2015): 6,679

Percent Change: -26%

• It appears here that overall foul volume is down as well by about 26% . It is safe to say that the NBA has not gotten “soft” due to an increase in foul calling. But WHY is this the case? Maybe the referees now have a keen eye, or maybe the players are more behaved these days? Lets venture down another road and look through the lens of hustle stats. To do so, I will look at two actions that , if done over aggressively,can lead to a foul call. Ladies and Gentleman I introduce to you: Steals and Blocks.

The Why?

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• I think we may have gotten an answer! First, lets point out that these hustle stats appear to follow similar trends. Second, referencing the average fouls graphs we see a dramatic dip right around the 2006 season continuing to the 2013 season. If we compare that the Blocks and Steals graphs, we see a corresponding increase during that time period. Therefore, we can conclude that less fouls were being were recorded during the late 2000’s because of the rise of acknowledged hustle statistics during games.

Conclusions

• Referees were actually LESS inclined to call fouls during the late 2000’s.
• Based on Metta World Peace’s theory of softer NBA: the NBA in early 2000’s was NOT more physical than it would seems today.
• This does not mean that the players back in the early 2000’s or much before did not commit more aggressive fouls.

Bonus

Everyone who has played the game of basketball knows how important it is down the stretch to hit their free throws. We all know foul shots occur if we get fouled. Since overall personal foul calls are down, lets see if this has any effect on the number of free throw attempts.

• Free throw attempts are clearly down!

Thanks for reading!