The Association crew debate how long SGA’s scoring streak will last.
In what unexpectedly, unofficially, turned into Milestone Week in the NBA, the two we just saw chased down wouldn’t have been possible without a grittier, less glamorous stat category than points scored in a game or the night-after-night pursuit of astounding offensive consistency:
Fouls.
As Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander pushed his streak of consecutive games scoring 20 points or more to a record 127 on Thursday against Boston – breaking the immortal Wilt Chamberlain’s streak of 126 games 63 years after the big man crafted it – he got there in large part thanks to fouls. Without the free throws during this streak, that began back on Nov. 1, 2024, he would have fallen short of 20 points in 27 games.
That’s not to disparage Gilgeous-Alexander’s remarkable consistency or the repertoire of skills he has used along the way – it’s just a fact. During his streak, Gilgeous-Alexander has gotten 25% of his points (1,034/4,127) from the foul line. His average of 9.07 free-throw attempts across the 127 games would rank sixth all-time, landing him between Shaquille O’Neal (9.32) and Allen Iverson (8.94). And his 8.14 made per game would rank second on the career list (trailing only Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid’s 8.25).
The role fouls played in Bam Adebayo’s scoring splurge Tuesday against a woeful Washington defense were even more apparent. The Miami big man shot past Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant by racking up 83 points in his team’s blowout home victory. Thirty-six of those points came at the line. Adebayo was fouled 24 times (nine in the final quarter), generating 43 foul shots. Both his 36 makes and 43 attempts set an NBA individual single-game record.
At his season rate before Tuesday – 3.7 of 4.8 from the line – Adebayo would have scored 51 points. Still impressive, still a personal best, but far from Bryant’s 81 and barely half of Chamberlain’s vaunted 100.
Given the central role played by all those fouls, it seemed appropriate to look head-on at those infractions in NBA lore.
Fouls are an undeniable part of every game, a yin and yang within each individual performance. There are so-called smart fouls, dumb fouls, clean fouls, dirty fouls, hard fouls, soft fouls, good fouls, bad fouls, fouls to give and “take” fouls. Don’t forget about intentional fouls, mindless fouls, strategic fouls, message fouls, shooting fouls, loose-ball fouls and fouls away from the ball.
Defensive fouls are common, unless they are flagrant. Offensive fouls can come from being overly assertive or theatrically cagey. Fouls can dictate minutes, determine matchups, decide outcomes and trigger tempers.
It just so happens that it was 39 years ago this week that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke the record for most fouls in a career. On March 10, 1987, Abdul-Jabbar was whistled for charging against Denver Nuggets center Danny Schayes in an eventual 143-107 win. That call by referee Bruce Alexander was the 4,194th foul of Abdul-Jabbar’s career, pushing him past Elvin Hayes (4,193) for the most in NBA history.
Abdul-Jabbar gained far more fame as a scorer, six-time Most Valuable Player, six-time NBA champion and longtime social justice advocate than he did for fouling. He topped Chamberlain as the NBA’s all-time points leader in 1984 and held the crown until LeBron James passed him in 2023.
But Abdul-Jabbar has owned the fouls record (4,657 when he retired in 1989)for 40 years. Russell Westbrook, 37, is the closest active player to Abdul-Jabbar’s total but trails by more than 1,300 fouls. Westbrook could foul out of his next 200 games and still be more than 150 short.
Here are some other foul facts:
NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game despite playing more than 47,000 career minutes.
– Accumulating fouls is a function of playing often, of course. Karl Malone ranks second to Kareem with 4,578 fouls, Robert Parish is third with 4,443 and Charles Oakley is fourth with 4,421. In other words, the four compilers played 20, 19, 21 and 19 seasons, respectively.
– The most fouls committed in one NBA season was 386, by New Jersey center Darryl Dawkins in 1983-84. That came on the heels of Dawkins’ 1982-83, when he amassed 379. The most by anyone not named Dawkins was Steve Johnson’s 372 in 1981-82.
– Johnson, a center for the Kings in their Kansas City era, fouled out of games 25 times that season. Dawkins disqualified himself 23 times in ’82-83. Both fell short of Don Meineke’s record of 26 set in 1952-53 with the Pistons when they played in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
– Five players share the record for most seasons (three) leading the league in fouls. They are George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen, Dawkins, Shawn Kemp and DeMarcus Cousins. Among active players, Karl-Anthony Towns, Andre Drummond and Dillon Brooks have done it twice each. Towns is on track to do it again with 224 fouls.
– No one has fouled out more than Mikkelsen, the Minneapolis Lakers forward who maxed out at six fouls a record 127 times, according to the 2025-26 NBA Guide. A different source pegs him with 131. Walter Dukes, an All-Star center who played most of his eight seasons with Detroit, ranks second with 121 disqualifications.
– Dukes takes a back seat to no one, though, in his share of games fouling out. He got shut down due to fouls in 121 of his 553 appearances, a rate of 21.88%. Mikkelsen ran out of fouls 127 times in 631 games (20.13%).
– Chamberlain is famous at the other end of this spectrum for having never fouled out in 1,045 games. Jamal Crawford, three-time winner of the NBA Sixth Man Award, never picked up six fouls in 1,327 appearances. But he played 38,994 minutes to Chamberlain’s 47,859 minutes. Golden State coach Steve Kerr, in 910 games over 15 seasons, never fouled out – but he averaged a modest 17.8 minutes in his career.
– For a sense of the NBA’s real frequent fouler club, it’s helpful to look at fouls pro-rated to actual time on the floor. The all-time list?: Greg Dreiling, 7.83 fouls per 36 minutes played; Don Reid, 7.60; and Paul Mokeski, 6.72. This is where we see the differentiation of hatchet men from lifetime compilers. The top four in total fouls, as noted above, and 13 of the top 20, are Hall of Famers. But there’s no Hall of Fame player among the top 100 in fouls per 36, and no active player until we get down to No. 182, Utah’s Jusuf Nurkić, 4.64.
– A special nod here to Bubba Wells, a shooting guard from Austin Peay who logged 39 games with Dallas in 1997-98. On Dec. 29 that season, Wells got into the Mavericks’ game at Chicago in two shifts totaling 2:43. Then he was gone, fouling out in less than three minutes and using all six fouls on Dennis Rodman (who shot 9-of-12 from the line in the Bulls’ 111-105 victory). Wells’ fouls pro-rated to 36 minutes that night? A staggering 79.51.
The game’s history is replete with amusing, even inexplicable, foul stories. There was Kevin McHale’s foul on Michael Jordan at the end of regulation in Game 2 of their teams’ 1986 Eastern Conference first-round series, the double-overtime game in which Jordan scored a playoff record 63 points. The Celtics were about to win when McHale clipped Jordan on his only 3-point attempt of the game, enabling the Bulls star to tie and force overtime (the Celtics won anyway).
There was the night Al McGuire made good on a boast to sportswriters that Celtics legend Bob Cousy wouldn’t score his average with McGuire defending him. McGuire went on to become a Hall of Fame coach at Marquette and a beloved broadcaster, but he first played briefly with the Knicks in the 1950s.
Sure enough, that night, Cousy still had points to go when McGuire fouled out in the first quarter while guarding him.
Then there was Cal Bowdler’s achievement on Nov. 13, 1999, when he set a modern NBA record with seven – that’s right, seven – personal fouls. Deep into the fourth quarter against Portland, the Atlanta rookie fouled Jermaine O’Neal, with the Trail Blazers calling a timeout. Bowdler then returned to the floor with the others, the scorekeeper and the referees failing to notice it had been his sixth foul.
With 50 seconds left, Bowdler fouled O’Neal again and was banished, but with an extra foul in his stats line.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X
