I would like to see how common it is for players to foul out of NBA games, and see how that trends over time. I think it is much rarer now that 20 years ago. Does anyone know where I could get statistics on this?
Bump.
Maybe it would easier to look for complete player by player stats by year, and I’ll crunch the data from there. Any takers?
I do not know if such stats are online, comprehensively.
You might try something like this though.
Moving to The Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
One last bump to see if anyone has a better source… preferably going back a couple decades.
The stat you’re looking for is “Disqualifications,” which might help you google exactly what you’re looking for.
I can’t get you a comprehensive list at the moment, but if all you’re looking for is a snapshot, start with a site like this and scroll through decade by decade. You can look at other teams’ histories, as well, and at least see how many time per season people were fouling out, broadly speaking. This site has the “official” disqualifications records.
Maybe that’s something to go on?
Pulled a bunch of data off of basketballreference.com and merged it together to see what fell out. The only thing I could find was yearly totals of personal fouls per game by team so it doesn’t exactly answer the # of DQs, but I think the # of fouls per game probably tracks pretty closely since more fouls would tend to go along with more foul outs. This covered 1946 through the 06-07 season. So, on to the data!
- The team that committed the most fouls per game (32.1) over the course of a season was the 1949-50 Tri-Cities Blackhawks. To find a team as recent as the 1980’s, you’d have to go to the 13th place Kansas City Kings of 82-83 at 29.7 per game. The highest fouling team of the 90s was the Dallas Mavericks of 92-93 in 44th place at 28.1 fouls per game. The highest fouling team of the 00s was the Knicks of 05-06 in 178th place at 26.3 fouls per game.
- When sorted by year, there is an obvious downward trend in the number of fouls called per team per game with a negative yearly change of about .06 fouls per game. There are a couple of obvious changes in rate that stand out. In 68-69, they were at 26.42 per game, the following year started a dive that kept the next 17 years right around 25 per game. Then, starting in 1986-87, another dropoff point occurs that nosedives down to the 22.5 range. I found it amazing that the NBA era dominated by the Bad Boy/Riley Knick styles had so few fouls. I guess teams that played extremely physical got away with fouls which led to more physicality which was never called in a vicious circle that stalled the sport for a while.
- 2001-02 saw a low point of 21.24 fouls per game which is pretty ridiculous. It’s interesting that the comeback of the sport over the last few years coincides with an increased rate of foul calls, in 04-05 until now, it has risen back up above 22 per team per game.
Fouls by team by year
Year Fouls per game per team
1946-47 20.73
1947-48 22.25
1948-49 25.58
1949-50 26.94
1950-51 27.09
1951-52 26.80
1952-53 28.90
1953-54 25.33
1954-55 24.75
1955-56 26.50
1956-57 25.13
1957-58 25.50
1958-59 26.00
1959-60 25.63
1960-61 26.75
1961-62 25.89
1962-63 26.00
1963-64 26.89
1964-65 25.89
1965-66 26.11
1966-67 26.30
1967-68 26.42
1968-69 25.50
1969-70 25.21
1970-71 24.29
1971-72 23.71
1972-73 22.82
1973-74 23.88
1974-75 24.33
1975-76 24.83
1976-77 25.27
1977-78 25.23
1978-79 25.41
1979-80 24.41
1980-81 25.00
1981-82 26.22
1982-83 25.74
1983-84 25.74
1984-85 24.87
1985-86 25.22
1986-87 24.61
1987-88 24.04
1988-89 23.76
1989-90 23.26
1990-91 23.26
1991-92 22.30
1992-93 23.15
1993-94 22.15
1994-95 23.44
1995-96 23.03
1996-97 22.14
1997-98 22.45
1998-99 22.21
1999-00 23.24
2000-01 22.34
2001-02 21.24
2002-03 21.79
2003-04 21.41
2004-05 22.63
2005-06 22.73
2006-07 22.13