Comparing Loose Ball Fouls Drawn and Committed

Before the break on this blog I used ESPN’s play-by-play data to publish detailed information about fouls in the last 5 NBA seasons including shooting, personal and loose ball fouls committed and shooting, personal and loose fouls drawn with a couple of different topics in mind.

Surprisingly for me, two columnists from bleacherreport.com not only read those posts but also found them useful and beat me to the punch – Kelly Scaletta wrote about “12 players who get the most star treatment” and Raj Prashad wrote an article titled “top10 smartest defenders” – so in the process they saved me some time
[I would have done those topics somewhat differently and with a bigger sample size but angle would be similar and it’s my blogging philosophy not to repeat anybody’s work].

They covered personal and shooting fouls which left me with only one type to play with – loose ball fouls.
They occur when nobody is in a possession of the ball and players fight for a position or for a ball.
And for that reason I find them interesting, who does usually win those battles?
Is it a skill or is it a random event? Is it only about size and strength?
Unfortunately, I can’t answer those questions directly because play-by-play data doesn’t have so much details but we can talk about instances when referee had to make an argument for one side over the over…

Here’s a comparison of total Loose Ball Fouls Drawn, total Loose Ball Fouls Committed and Difference between them for the last 5 seasons combined.
I listed all players with such difference in double figures. “<0" means "seasons with difference below 0".