Jaren Jackson Jr.’s much-publicized fouling woes were a prominent issue of his during his rookie campaign. Actually, “much-publicized” is overstating it by quite a bit, but his fouling woes were at least “medium-publicized”, including by me. That season, Jackson Jr. averaged 5.2 fouls per 36 minutes.
It hasn’t gotten better for JJJ in his second year. His fouling rate has seen an uptick from 5.2 to 5.6 per 36 minutes. That basically means that if you played him the maximum amount of minutes that a player gets these days (around 38), JJJ would foul out of most games. That’s not to say that he doesn’t make up for the fouling with his scoring and his improving playmaking and his defense which I think he has (Grizzlies fans please tell me if he plays defense or not), but the fouling definitely prevents him from being on the court when he’s needed.
There are actually a number of rotation players who are worse foulers than JJJ, but not many:
Damian Jones (6.9 fouls per 36)
Moritz Wagner (6.8)
Dewayne Dedmon (6.5)
Dwight Howard (6.5)
Tony Bradley (6.1)
Jahlil Okafor (5.9)
Kris Dunn (5.8)
Daniel Gafford (5.8 [he’s not exactly a ‘rotation player’ but he should be god damn it])
Jaren Jackson (5.6)
Skal Labissiere (5.6)
Mitchell Robinson (5.6)
I don’t know what the point of listing that stat is, but it’s kind of an interesting stat so I’m going to leave it there even though I don’t have anything to add to it. I guess it speaks for itself. And…this description is kind of puttering out. Let’s just end it here.