The Dallas Game: Who was the 'Aggressor' by the Numbers

When I first started looking this up, I went in to it with a “the numbers above don’t convince me, but lets see what’s out there” approach. I was open to finding anything out. As you’ll soon see though, I’ve gone from “unconvinced” to “strongly disagree”.

Your conclusion above is that the refs unfairly swung the game in Dallas’ favor. The main premise is that the numbers show that Portland was the aggressor, and being the aggressor should have led to more foul shots. I’ll start there. Of all the numbers, the points in the paint is the only one that really jumps out to me as strongly supporting this, but we’ll go through them all.

Lets review offensive stats first. Being more aggressive on offense should lead to more trips to the foul line. I don’t see any of the following stats being very relevant to aggressiveness in the “getting fouled” sense: FG% (if anything, lower FG% would mean less aggressive, but overall probably not much correlation here), assists (aggressive drives to the hoop don’t get assists, but sometimes ball movement leads to quick reaction fouls… another push here), 3FG% (same as regular FG%), bench points (completely unrelated), points off turnovers (turnovers themselves are addressed below, but I don’t see offensive efficiency after the turnovers as being related to aggressiveness). Offensive rebounds are very relevant when measuring aggressiveness (both teams had 11). So are fast break points (Portland has a small lead 13-10).

The most relevant stat when trying to measure aggressiveness (in the “getting fouled” sense) is probably points in the paint. Portland dominated this one 36 to 18. As I alluded to above though, this can be misleading because not all points in the paint are built the same. Here’s some info from the play by play. I separated assisted layups from unassisted layups because unassisted layups are a product of somebody putting their head down and going to the basket (i.e. pure foul generating aggressiveness) while assisted layups are sometimes just the product of good ball movement (I’d much rather have the Blazers get more of these, but they’re a tad less indicative of aggressiveness). I also separated misses since it’s not known which category they fall under. These are ordered based roughly on how indicative they are of aggressiveness.

Portland:
Dunks (no assist) – 0
Dunks (assisted) – 0
Layups (no assist) – 3
Layups (missed) – 4
Layups (assisted) – 11
Other shots <10 ft – 7
Total – 25

Dallas:
Dunks (no assist) – 1
Dunks (assisted) – 1
Layups (no assist) – 1
Layups (missed) – 8
Layups (assisted) – 2
Other shots <10 ft – 6
Total – 19

Portland spent more time in time in the lane, but Dallas’ numbers tend a bit towards the more aggressive side. It seems like the main reason Portland had so many more points in the paint as Dallas missing so dang many layups. Overall though, edge Portland for offensive stats indicating that they should have received more fouls.

Next lets look at defensive stats. In this case “more aggressive” stats actually indicate that the team should have committed more fouls… so us having more blocks (7 to 4) shows that we were more aggressive on defense and more inclined to foul. Their edge in steals and turnovers balances this out. I don’t see defensive rebounding as having a strong correlation to aggressive defense, at least not in the “fouling more” sense (which is good for Portland because it would go against us). Overall, defensive aggressiveness is pretty much a push.

So it seems like Portland was a bit more aggressive, but they received 12 less foul shots (35-23)… but four of Dallas’ were from Ts while only one of Portland’s was (a def3sec call). Four of Dallas’ shots were intentional fouls at the end of the game and we certainly can’t hold those against unfair officiating. Take those all out and it’s a much closer 27-22. Still a little off from what we’d expect though. This leads us to the one thing that was left out of the main post… something that’s probably the most relevant stats on the entire box score… something I didn’t even think of myself until I went to look this stuff up myself.

The actual number of fouls called was 22 on Portland and 19 on Dallas. Take out the to intention fouls and it’s 20-19. Why the free throw discrepancy then? Dallas only had a single “and 1” out of 14 trips to the line (again, not counting the intentional fouls at the end). Portland had had four “and 1”s out of 13 trips.

So despite everything everyone is saying about the refs deciding the game, Dallas only had one more trip to the line than Portland. While the numbers above suggest Portland as being more aggressive on offense, it wasn’t incredibly so. Certainly not anything that should get anybody saying the refs decided this game based on Dallas having one more trip to the line.