NBA 2024 Finals: Player Falls and Knockdowns

When I was with the Dallas Mavericks, Rick Carlisle used to preach to the team to have a "Hit First Mentality" or to put it another way, to hit more than you get hit. Be the aggressor, the more physical team, don't shy away from contact but embrace it and create it.

In the NBA 2024 Finals it's safe to say the Celtics won that battle!

Dallas players fell to the ground 110 times over the five games... Boston players fell only 67 times.

Moreover the Mavs only got a foul called on Boston on 24% of those falls, to the Celtics' 33% foul drawing rate on falls.

...and if you're looking for support for Jaylen Brown as the Finals MVP, he led all players by a big margin in total "Knockdowns" (causing an opposing player to fall)...and only got dinged for a foul on 8 of the 30 KD's he had. His physicality was a key reason why the Celtics dominated.

The other piece to this is since the in-season refereeing changes on what is going to be called a foul, falling doesn't pay off like it used to! Credit the Celtics for hitting more than being hit, although of course a lot depends on how the refs call a game...

If you look at the players with 10+ falls their 'Fall foul drawing rate' looks like this:

         White 50%, Gafford 42%, Brown 37%, Holiday 33%, Kyrie 28%, Green 18%...Luka 16%.

...in the pivotal Game 3 where Luka was called out afterwards for barking at the refs a lot (and indeed, we had him with 13 'major arguing moments' and another 7 'significant' ones), on his 8 falls he got zero fouls called on Boston, while on his 6 knockdowns they called him for a foul four times! So a rough whistle indeed!

The situation that causes the fall also has a lot to do with the expected foul rate.

Fall Situation and Foul Drawn Rate

• Defending on a screen (56% foul drawing rate)
• as Offensive player on Fastbreak (47%)
• Defending on a drive (38%)
• on a 3pt shot (36%)
• Driving (32%)
• Going for a defensive rebound (29%)
• Going for an offensive rebound (19%)

Now Falls/Knockdowns are just one "physicality stat" we create, but they have a slightly more "objective" quality to the more in depth ratings that we will start publishing next season..but a full assessment of the so called "intangibles" like playing hard, basketball IQ, and yes physicality is actually closer than you might think!