Here’s your list of players currently in the playoffs that averaged the most turnovers per 100 possessions (same thing as touches) during the regular season:

• Only counted players that played at least 24 minutes per game.
• Basically, when Reggie Evans touches the ball he turns the ball over an astounding quarter of the time.
• Obviously, the vast majority of these players are post players — and that’s the tradeoff of getting a post shot: you get an easier shot (compared to a 18-foot jumper) but the probability of getting the ball poked away is greater.
• Houston is the only playoff team with two players that averaged more than 13 turnovers per 100 possessions apiece (though Jeremy Lin is currently injured).  This turnover rate is also tempo-adjusted (i.e. per 100 possessions) so even after accounting for Houston’s fast tempo they have two turnover-prone players.
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I also looked at guards that are currently in the playoffs and who had high turnover rates during the regular season:

• Again, only looked at regular season guards that played in at least 30 regular season games and play at least 24 minutes a game.
• Note that both of the Rockets’ starting guards (Lin and Harden) had high turnover rates — think how good the Rockets could be if they kept their turnovers down, even a little bit?
• Surprising that Andre Miller and Mario Chalmers had two of the three highest turnover rates of any playoff guard.  Understandably, Professor Miller runs a high-octane offense (though again, turnover rate is tempo-adjusted) that focuses on pounding the ball into the paint.  And as we saw in the previous graph, the players with the highest turnover rates tend to be post players, so trying to feed the post can be a risky strategy, which might be why Andre Miller has a relatively high turnover rate.
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Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Yesterday, I looked at NBA refs and the rate that they call technical fouls.  Today, I’m looking at which refs tend to call more charges and which refs tend to call more blocks.  I only looked at refs that refereed at least 45 games to make sure there was a decent sample size of charges and blocks.  Basically the intuition of sample size is that in one game a ref might call seven charges and one block — and if all the data you have is that one game, then your data is skewed.  But if you have data from over the course of a season (or 45 games) your data does not end up being skewed.

(In case you’re curious…here’s the data source: http://vorped.com/bball/index.php/referee).

The charge-block ratio is basically the rate at which refs call charges relative to the rate at which refs call blocks.  For example, Scott Forster has a very high charge to block ratio of 10.25.  This means that this season he has called 10.25 times as many charges than blocks.  Dick Bavetta on the other hand has a charge to block ratio of 1.8.  This means that Bavetta has called 1.8 times as many charges than blocks.

What is astonishing is that only one NBA ref that has refereed at least 45 games calls more blocks than charges.  That ref would be Tony Brothers, who has a charge to block ratio of 0.889.  This suggests that experienced NBA refs tend to call more charges than blocks, in general — that’s why the average charge to block ratio is 2.41.