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Foul accumulation in the NBA

  • Dani Chu and Tim B. Swartz EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: September 9, 2020

Abstract

This paper investigates the fouling time distribution of players in the National Basketball Association. A Bayesian analysis is presented based on the assumption that fouling time distributions follow a gamma distribution. Various insights are obtained including the observation that players accumulate fouls at a rate that increases with the current number of fouls. We demonstrate possible ways to incorporate the fouling time distributions to provide decision support to coaches in the management of playing time.


Corresponding author: Tim B. Swartz, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, V5A1S6, Canada, E-mail:

Acknowledgment

The authors have been partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for valuable comments that improved the paper.

  1. Author contribution: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: The authors have been partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

  3. Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.

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Received: 2019-11-18
Accepted: 2020-08-22
Published Online: 2020-09-09
Published in Print: 2020-11-18

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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