Comments on: LeBron James’ Foul Issue: A Rebuttal

By: Graduated and Unemployed

Graduated and Unemployed — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:46:01 +0000

(Disclaimer: I didn’t proofread every single post for a similar comment because most people are too long winded) The only possible way to determine if someone is getting calls is to go through all the video from all the games. There are just too many variables that dispute statistics like this. Here’s how it works: LeBron haters find examples of LeBron getting calls, others find examples of everyone else. Period, end of discussion. I watched John Wall travel blatantly last night, but as a Georgia fan I am not going to make any generalizations about him unless I watched all his film.

By: Former NBA fan

Former NBA fan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:06:50 +0000

This is why I can’t watch NBA games anymore, it is just too frustrating to watch the best players so blatantly being rewarded by refs on every single possession. And yes, any idiot with eyes can tell that LBJ gets more than any other star out there and on top of it he still complains nonstop. I just don’t get today’s players, I mean what more do you want, maybe we just let the refs vote for the NBA champion, that way LBJ could finally get one. I honestly thought the Tim Donaghey thing might straighten out the calls this year, but once again the NBA continues to disappoint. Maybe they can figure out how to do something about this before hockey surpasses them in popularity.

By: Sam Cohen

Sam Cohen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:22:37 +0000

Do you know if this relationship holds true if you look at each position (i.e., guards, forwards, centers) separately? Or are we just seeing that “bigs” score less and foul more compared to “smalls”? (Not saying that this assumption is true since I haven’t seen any numbers on this point, but it seems like one potential confounding piece of information)

By: The Mid-Afternoon Milk Mustache, featuring the Greendale CC Rockets? | Stacheketball, an NBA Blog

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:52:37 +0000

[...] The Fu Manchu: Roger Pimental makes a rebuttal against Zachariah Blott’s article claiming that the statistics show Lebron is receiving preferential treatment from the officials. Very solid stat work here. [How To Watch Sports] [...]

By: Tim Was Tim

Tim Was Tim — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:24:24 +0000

LeBron is the best player, and he plays for my favorite team.

nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

By: shawn

shawn — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:28:49 +0000

yeah LeBron is this important to America…YOU’RE TALKIN ABOUT FOULS? I’M MEAN COME ON? FOULS. I’m from Cleveland and give us the rings already…we’ve already whooped everyone!

By: uncleto

uncleto — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:07:41 +0000

GTown FTW.

By: Miles

Miles — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:01:31 +0000

LBJ makes the bulk of his fouls on offense = at least 2-3 a game.

The refs protect James more than Kobe! DWade gets about the same assistance as LBJ for the most part when relating to calls in his favor whether its mysterious call or no call. The refs refuse to call the offesive charge on LBJ thats the most damning thing.

The refs choose to call more fouls on Kobe or Dwade because they are making some regular calls and some bad calls vs them = It occurs in flow of the game so its understanable that these type players make 3 fouls per game when you factor in thy players they are guarding and their aggressive defenive ways. When it comes to LBJ, its seems like the refs just dont want to call fouls on him whether offensive or defensive unless its just to plain obvious.

This is the worst refute article I have read. There is no evidence to counter the original article. This guy doesnt use the same players nor factor in that no otehr players in the NBA matter when calculating this except Kobe, Wade, Mello, LBJ, Pierce, KG, Duncan = (Only Superstar can achieve this type of help to where it influences the outcomes of games. All other role players or the newbies = new stars cant be used because they dont affect their teams Win outcome as the Superstars mentioned above.

By: Mike H

Mike H — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:42:11 +0000

Player seasons who played at least 1500 minutes, starting in 2001.

Pts48: Fouls48
0…10: 4.95
10…15: 4.49
15…20: 4.09
20…25: 3.84
25…99: 3.52

There’s an obvious relationship. Causality is up for debate.

By: Gtown

Gtown — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:15:11 +0000

This article isn’t about LBJ, it’s about irresponsible journalism. It was mislabeled as a rebutal which it isn’t, it never attacks Blott’s conclusion. What this article actally is, is a criteque on the piss poor methodology and misinterpretation of data by Blott.

I majored in math in college, have taken multiple statistics classes, and can tell you that Blott’s analysis is attrocious.

It seems like 2/3 of the people that posted responses either didn’t read the entire article, or weren’t able to follow the errors in Blott’s mathematical reasoning, or both.

Statements like â€œThis all means that the likelihood of LeBronâ€™s foul counts occurring with his minutes is less than one in a million.â€ are 100% mathematically false. You cannot make that statement or conclusion from this data or this type of analysis.

You don’t have to like or dislike LBJ or even basketball to understand that Blott’s article was poorly conceived and terribly executed.

Blott’s article is a joke and had it been in something more reputable than an internet blog he’d be printing a retraction.