Last year he was playing against bench players and this year it's mostly against other starters, so maybe that explains the lack of improvement.

His bonehead plays also work out quite often though, and we tend to forget about those. The steal the other night where he snuck up behind the player as he was running back on D. It resulted in a fast break dunk and huge momentum builder. But if he would have got the whistle it would have looked like a really idiotic play.


A really good ratio to know would be the # of fouls he commits to the number of plays he's involved in defensively. It's totally unrealistic to ever get that stat, but it is the sort of thing we have to thing about when we're evaluating him.

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You can never have perfect introspection: because if you could, then you could determine what you were going to do ten seconds from now, and then do something else.

I just think that it's a case of 3 or 4 times a game, Amir simply forgets that fouling is illegal.

Maybe there is some truth to this. Perhaps the coaches need to call fouls more tightly in practice where typically you can get away with almost anything.

You don't want to reign in Amir's energy and aggression. Amir just needs to eliminate some of the bonehead fouls if he wants to stay as a main cog in the rotation.

Unfortunately unlike other stats, fouls have a limit. You have to sit down. Amir is playing against starters, does take chances, and sometimes makes great plays from those chances. But, fouling isn't free, and Amir taking fewer chances on steals and blocks and playing the full game getting boards and stickbacks is a better deal than him taking more chances and getting fouls.

In the last couple of games, Amir has one whole half with no fouls, and one whole half with just 1. And in this last game, Amir's active defense helped keep the Clips to around 25% shooting while he was in the game.

(Also, in this last game, the 3rd foul in the 1st half was a bad call. So he really only committed 2 fouls in that half.)

Here is a good way to judge what is going on. Look at his foul rate from late last season when he was playing a ton. There was simply no problem after he got into the rythm of the NBA. In other words, just let him play, the problem will go away.

I really do think there might be something to the theory that the refs call the games tight out of the gate.

Maybe it makes more sense to start Maxiell and bring Amir off the bench deep into the first quarter. Give him his usual 25 minutes, but sit him out during the tone-setting minutes by the refs.

I'm not buying this one. Refs call fouls when guys foul. Amir doesn't get the same benefit as established players, but most of his fouls are legit. Amir was fouling at the same rate last year in garbage time as he is this year as a starter.

If you look at the summer league, he picked up quite a few fouls, someone correct me if I am wrong here, but; are the refs a bit more lenient in the summer league.

You are absolutely correct. And, even if you weren't, Amir is going to have to adjust his game slightly to accomodate for his fouling. The NBA officials are not going to adjust the way they call games for Amir Johnson.

There is definitely a difference between Amir fouls and Maxiell fouls though. Maxiell hacks dudes hard. Amir's are usually the reach-in variety, over the backs, moving screens, 70% ball-30% arm block attempts, etc. They more like Sheed's fouls, but his fundementals aren't nearly as good.