Very true but the the officiating in the league changing sometimes on a yearly basis due to points of emphasis etc it's too difficult to really get a good grip on what the total number of fouls means from year to year let alone era vs era. Just talking from my work keyboard here but hypothetically if a certain foul is more or de-emphasized that allows a player like Drexler to get to the basket easier where fouls are easier to come by then it's possible rule changes on a yearly basis and changes over the course of an era would make it easier for Drexler to accumlate points. I think just looking at how many fouls are being called in general really isn't a great way of evaluating the "physicality" of a league at a certain time.
There's just far too many variables IMO for the stat to mean much of anything.
What fouls are being called more in general? Where are the fouls being called on the floor? Are there more shooting fouls? What rules were de-emphasized or called more strictly from a year to year basis that would benefot/hurt a player like Drexler getting fouled or to the FT line?
Hypothetically there may have been less fouls called back in Drexlers era and the 90's as the game was more physical players had more free reign to bump, grab etc and it was within the rules so those fouls weren't called. Fast forward to today. More fouls are being called for the reason that something that was allowable 20 years ago no longer is and has to be whistled. Players get to the lane more easily as such and fouls in the lane increase as players are more able to get into crowded areas where fouls are more likely. Who know's really. There's far too many variables to use the fouls stat as a real indicator of anything for the physical play of an era....for either side.
Admittedly, I do not have access to the specifics of fouls called throughout NBA history, so I am not able to answer to the very valid questions you brought up. However, would the ambiguity of fouling statistics not also work against the "Drexler would get to the foul line more" side? They are facing those same ambiguities, just from the other side. They cannot say with any amount of certainty that Drexler would get to the foul line more (and thus increase his value above and beyond Pierce) than he did previously, just as I cannot say that he decidedly would not.
This goes back to the idea that you can only go so far with era-comparisons, because eventually you are going to want to play one player's career all over again in a different era, which necessitates a whole bunch of assumptions on your part, many of which will have no basis in fact, or would at the very least violate the whole "the game isn't played on a computer" rule that so many seem to have.
To me, the fouling discussion is a moot point: no side is going to be able to please the other, and really we lack the modeling tools (and the time machine) necessary to go back and actually see what would happen.
(Forgot to read all the way to the end of the part I quoted, so yeah, basically what you said)
I would disagree with that point though. Like I said I'd take Drexler over Paul Pierce 7 days a week and not even think about it. Regardless of Drexler's career scoring average compared to Pierce Drexler IMO was a betetr player and more highly regarded against his own era than Pierce is/was. Like I also said before...simply evlauating the players stats heads up misses the picture of what they were asked to do on their team, how the assimilated into the team concept and the style of basketball their teams played. There's too many variables to simply base Pierce < or > Drexler based upon an evaluation of little more than their scoring average.
That's getting back into subjective valuating, though, and it is also assuming that it is known to a very high degree that the player was asked to do something other than what his abilities would be best applied to doing on the court,
and that the true ability level of the player is known. Think about it, when you choose not to punish Drexler for not out-scoring Pierce (or just plain putting more points on the board), you are assuming that he was explicitly told (or asked) not to do that,
and that he would have had better output
had he not been told/asked to do those things. That's quite a bit of assuming, don't you think?
In the end, a player's statistical output is all we have to go on, because it is obviously impossible to start a given player's career over again in another era, playing out the season on a computer with a given formula or algorithm wouldn't satisfy the basketball purists, and pure subjective reasoning ultimately leads to sweeping generalizations and assumptions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the subjective breakdown of Drexler's overall game, his shot, his tenacity or whatever else would be a very interesting discussion, but it would be improper to then take those subjective points and extract concrete meaning (this guy is better than that guy), especially when it flies in the face of what the
real numbers tell you (that guy is actually better than this guy).
And I'm not saying that the statistical route is infallible, but when there is such a highly contested debate about a given point, and the real, tangible, testable numbers favor one side, and the other side is only left with subjective breakdowns and suppositions, to me the choice is obvious on which way to go.
Who knows, maybe Clyde Drexler was better than Paul Pierce, maybe Drexler would tear up today's NBA, it would be close-minded of me to say that it is impossible or out of the question, but discussion on that topic doesn't really
mean anything, it's all just conjecture. All I can say is that of the two players, one gave more value (by way of keeping close in peripheral areas and performing significantly better in the most important area) than the other, and is thus the better player, and that is something that we can go back and test, and something that we an apply to other players, not just this specific one or this specific pair.
