As a matter of fact, if we assume (which is of course an approximation) that fouls come mostly from missed two point shots, then the winning team had about 12 possessions more than the losing team.
At 90 points per 100 possessions, this translates to close to 11 points. This certainly makes the result look less unusual. You can't limit your analysis to how attack vs. defense team ratings look.
Not really, because it still does not explain the significant difference in fouls and FT shots taken. You are factoring the number of possessions with the number of FTs. There is no question we lost the game because of too many shooting fouls. The question is - why? It is not like they had good enough flow or outside shooting vs our d to force us into taking a boat load of fouls.
In fact, with their fast pace, they should have been taking shots that were of much lower quality than us.
The problem with losing this game was that you gave up too much in the other zones (ID and Rebs), which allowed Suomi to win by sheer volumes.
The rebounding was not a big issue, as I already pointed out, because that is compensated by the turnover differential. ID, maybe. Even still, they picked the wrong offense to take advantage of our "poor" inside d (it is actually equal to their inside shooting team rating). And even if there was a mismatch there, they did not have the flow vs our outside d to take advantage.
Seriously, if you (and other GMs) are saying that I should not even bother looking at game ratings, why not just junk them? Or maybe just call them "Deliberately meaningless ratings (DMR)".
Run of the Mill Canadian Manager