All of these sound like plausible explanations.
Though I wonder how fouls work: whether a player misses a shot and the game then determines whether there was a foul on the play, or the foul is assessed at the moment where the shot is taken, and the foul just lowers the probability to score a basket.
It doesn't sound like good game design to reward players who constantly take bad (missable) shots.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."