The topic of NBA Officiating has been bouncing around lately, and I wanted to give it a few moments thought. The basic premise, as put forth in a recent letter from disgraced official Tim Donaghy, is that NBA League Officials, in the interest of protecting revenues and attendance, would issue instructions to game referees to alter their officiating in such a way to keep marquee players in games, and ensure longer running series.
The question is, how can we know this is the case? I mean, we have the disgraced official on onside, looking at jail time and claiming this stuff is going on. On the other hand, we have the league telling us it is all crap, and that such things never happen.
I have been thinking about this a little bit, and I think there would be some basic tests that you could run, to see if this is the case.
Theory: Refs are less likely to make technical foul calls against “popular” players to keep them in the game, and keep fans happy.
Possible Reason: Happy fans mean more money, etc.
Test: Well, I think you could shed some light on this by looking at the following.
1. Identify the “popular players”. Lets use Kobe as an example.
2. Using records of previous seasons, compare the following.
a. Across all games, look at the rate of fouls being earned, by quarter and by game. Compare early, mid, late and full seasons, as well as years with playoffs. Look for consistency. You might need to control for teams. If fixing is occuring, you should see a trend toward fewer technicals called, especially during the playoffs.
b. Now take from the same team, and look at the technical calls of a sample of non players, they should foul in a fairly consistent manner, and if fixing is going on, you might expect to see a separation between them and your popular player.
3. Recognize that this wouldn’t be conclusive.
Theory: Refs call games in such a way to ensure that playoffs last as long as possible.
Reason: Same as above
Test:
1. Examine playoff history. If fixing occurs, then on average, playoffs should go to 6 or 7 games more frequently then 3 or 4.
2. Compare the past records when the two teams meet and see if it compares to playoff performance.
3. With series, look at top scorers for each team for each game. When a team is close to elimination early in the series, compare to later in the series. There should be differences in frequency of free throws (phantom calls will be theoretically more likely early in the series, and less important later in the series), average scoring rates (game 1, your star player is “on fire” game 3 and 4 they can’t make a basket) I would look to see if the series leading team sees a drop off in scoring by top court time players, while those same players see more fouls being called on them, while conversely the series losing team top court time players are seeing more free throws. Early series games should look like late series games, while mid series games should appear lopsided.
Anyway, those are just some random thoughts. I watched a lot of the game last night, and during these playoffs, and I still can’t tell when something is a foul and when it isn’t because the games are so inconsitently called. Could there be truth to the fixing accusations? My gut says yes, but the proof would be in the statistics somewhere, and we should be looking for statistics that stand outside the “norm”.
