Star Michigan guard Trey Burke collected two personal fouls in the early minutes of the National Championship game against Louisville and he was promptly benched and sat out most of the remaining first half. The announcers didn’t bother to say why because its common wisdom that you don’t want your best players fouling out early.
But the common wisdom requires some scrutiny because on its surface it actually looks absurd. You fear your best player fouling out because then his playing time might be limited. So in response you guarantee his playing time will be limited by benching him. Jonathon Weinstein once made this point.
But just because basketball commentators, and probably even basketball coaches, don’t properly understand the rationale for the strategy doesn’t mean the strategy is unsound. In fact it follows from a very basic strategic idea: information is valuable.
Suppose the other team is scoring points at some random rate. If they are lucky they score a lot and if they are less lucky they score fewer. If the other team scores a lot your team should start shooting threes and go for short possessions to catch up. If the other team scores fewer you should go for safer shots and run down the clock. But you only know which of these you should do at the end of the game. If your best players are on the bench at that time you cannot capitalize on this information.
Cheap Talk 
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April 9, 2013 at 2:27 am
Kenan
…assuming these so-called strategies actually have any effect whatsoever on the team’s chances of winning. just imagine an rct on end-game strategies. i bet a randomly chosen sensible tactic would do equally well as one based on “valuable information”.
i think in most cases the coaches just don’t want to feel powerless at the end of the game. by keeping good players available they can pretend trying an end game tactic and have the illusion of control. if their end game move doesn’t work they can at least claim they tried.
the fact remains that better players win games. the more they play the more likely you will win.
April 9, 2013 at 10:51 am
dph
There are a couple other reasons why this strategically MIGHT make sense.
1) Psychological effects.. sitting a player for a period may allow him to gather his focus do whatever he needs to to get himself ready to go back in.
2) Fatigue. If you sit a player in a bit of foul trouble early, he may come out against weaker competition or tired competition – and may be less likely to over-extend and get himself in trouble.
3) Sending a message to the rest of the team .. sometimes the psychology of having your best player on the floor or Ice (hockey and basketball are similar this way, baseball is not) can impact the play of everyone else – they sit back and wait for the big dog to do something. If you sit him, you are sending the message that everyone else has to step up their game. This can mean that when your best comes back in, instead of carrying the play and having everyone else look to him for leadership, it is more of a team game – making it less likely for him to foul out.
April 9, 2013 at 11:02 am
Enrique
Notice what’s missing from this discussion — the whole concepts of the “foul” in basketball … Physical contact is unavoidable in a game like basketball, so why not only call egregious or hard fouls? As it stands now, must games are decided by free throws, which is ridiculous …
April 9, 2013 at 11:04 am
Enrique
Oops … The word “must” should be “most”
April 9, 2013 at 11:13 am
emir
Jeff, you seem to be making an implicit assumption, namely that the value of information is greater when you have better players on the court. In other words, information and skill are complements rather than substitutes in the production function. This is a sensible (though I would not say obvious) view, but it seems important to make its role explicit.
April 9, 2013 at 11:17 am
jeff
True. The assumption is that the best players are also the best at taking advantage of the idiosyncratic conditions in the game. I.e. they are also the most versatile.
But there is another way to the conclusion if we think from the coach’s perspective. Let’s say he’s got two specialist players whose skills are best suited for distinct game situations (a three-point shooter and an insider player say). The coach would decide which of these guys to have in at the end of the game depending on conditions. If one of them has fouled out the coach has a smaller feasible set of strategies.
April 9, 2013 at 11:49 am
Josh Weil (@joshweil)
Trey Burke averages 1.9 fouls per game. He sat on the bench way too long considering his propensity not-to-foul.
April 9, 2013 at 5:59 pm
o
Option value may be a different (better?) way of looking at it. Best player is good at a variety of strategies, other players are good at just one or the other. Keeping the best player until you know more about your needs could be optimal, even with no private information (how the game unfolds and each player’s talents could be public).
April 10, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Jonathan Weinstein
The “adaptability” motivation is an interesting point but I am certain it is orders of magnitude too small to justify the strategy. Josh Weil gives one good reason (particular to this player). Another is that altering tactics as described happens very little until the last 5, or (rarely) 10 minutes of the game. When you bench a player with *only 2* fouls, you are not trading first-half minutes for final five minutes, you are trading first-half minutes for start-of-2nd-half minutes, at a price greater than 1-to-1. This just doesn’t compute. These end-of-game concerns really only matter when a player is one foul from DQing.
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September 5, 2013 at 5:18 am
Marina
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October 17, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Pradeep
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