From a theoretical mathematics perspective (a branch of scholarship which I am intimately familiar with), how much of Kelly Oubre’s 27-point performance was negated by the fact that he committed an offensive foul with fifteen seconds left and the Suns down by three? To set the stage a bit more, Oubre had the ball behind the three-point line and tried to draw a shooting foul on his shot, but ended up throwing his arms so far forward into the defender that he was the one who got called for the foul instead. I’m not going to comment on the fairness of the call, I’m just going to pose the question as to how many of his points were nullified by that offensive foul.
In some sense, none of Oubre’s points mattered because of his late-game blunder. Scoring zero points for his team would have resulted in the same outcome, an L, as him scoring 27. On the other hand, he’s not even in a position to blow the game if he doesn’t score all those points in the first place. Maybe the correct thing to do from a pure mathematical perspective is to split the difference and say that Oubre had the equivalent of a 13.5-point performance, but that seems a bit impure given that half points don’t exist in the NBA.
Whatever the number comes out to be, I’m going to treat this performance by Oubre as if he has rightfully scored all 27 points. That’s important because Oubre is inching closer and closer to being disqualified from my channel, and only a two-week-long absence of twenty-point games saved him temporarily from the chopping block. If he values his place on my world-renowned NBA highlights channel, he’ll make sure not to score this many points again.