Racist NBA Officiating?

A few days back the NY Times had an article sneak-previewing an as-yet-unpublished study claiming to demonstrate biased officiating in the NBA. A snippet:

An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.

A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”

This was all in the context of their attempt to discern "own-race" preferences among NBA officials, and it is quite ingenious:

“I would be more surprised if it didn’t exist,” Mr. Ayres [an expert who reviewed the study for the Times] said of an implicit association bias in the N.B.A. “There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.”

...

To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.

But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew.

Before I became a believer, I would want to see an attempt to control for an obvious yet subjective variable - playing style.  The NBA has been in a long-term culture war (example) between the Fundamentalists, represented by a (probably white) kid practicing his jumper in the driveway and getting a spare key to the high school gym from his coach, and the Hip-Hoppers (probably black) playing a trash-talking high-flying city game.

Race is almost certainly a useful (but not perfectly accurate) proxy for this divide - John Stockton (who is white) played a very "white" game, but so did Mo Cheeks and so does Tim Duncan.  On the other hand Pete Maravich, also white, played with as much flash as anyone in the game.

Well.  I'll bet that if the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville announced an open music competition  - "Nashville Idol" - with five country music icons as judges, hip-hoppers and heavy metal rockers might lose out to the country crowd, but I would not say that it was due to racism per se.

And in the NBA, it may be that older, paler refs looking for an old school style of play are quicker to whistle the city slickers.

I don't know.  But it seems like a glaringly obvious point, and although the authors mention style of play as one possible explanation for their results, they seem to mean something quite different by it.

Comments

[Jeff Dobbs]

Do box scores tell you which ref called which foul?

I hear the NBA is allowing mixed-racial referee teams these days.

[Jeff Dobbs]

From the NYT article:

N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview that the league saw a draft copy of the paper last year, and was moved to do its own study this March using its own database of foul calls, which specifies which official called which foul.

[clarice]

There are white players in the NBA? Who knew?

[Other Tom]

I'll await a more detailed expplanation of the methodology, but based on what I have heard thus far, I think it is suspect.

It's my understanding that all that the analysts took into account for a given game was whether, among the three officials, there were zero, one, two or three blacks. In the middle two cases, I'm not sure I can attach much significance to a finding that black players were called for proportionately more fouls than in the first case. (I'm not sure that I can do so for any of the four cases, but the middle two pose the biggest problem for me.)

Did the analysts take into account the race of the beneficiary of the foul call? If a white ref gives Michael Jordan gets a trip to the free throw line by calling a foul on Patrick Ewing, does that tell us anything at all?

[Other Tom]

Well, Clarice, at least until last night I thought Dirk Nowitzki was a white NBA player. Now all I'm sure of is that he is white.

(Sorry, H&R.)

[Jeff Dobbs]

Other Tom, I was going to write the same thing....

But my theory is that the refs are Jooooos who took it out on Nowitzki as a measure of revenge for the Holocaust.

[PatrickR]

I haven't seen the paper, but have read commentary by people who have. As I understand the results, both white and black referees call the same number of fouls on black players.

The divergent treatment is strictly of white players. All-white officiating crews call fewer fouls on white players and all-black crews call more fouls on white players.

[Jeff Dobbs]

TM:
I'll bet that if the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville announced an open music competition - "Nashville Idol"

I'm going to sign you up for email updates from Nashville Star.

[Other Tom]

PatrickR, I'm not sure that they can even draw that conclusion. All they knew was the racial makeup of the officiating crew as a whole for each game, and the races of the players on whom the fouls were called. For mixed-race crews (which were included in their sample, and which seem to me to be predominant), the analysts do not know who called which fouls.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Do refs call more fouls on the nappy-headed?

[Neo]

This all reminds me of an interview with Charles Barkley (Phila, Houston, Phoenix) who said when he played in Houston and Phoenix, he knew every night which team was the better and it almost always predicted the game's outcome, but, by contrast, when he was in Philadelphia, he and his team mates never knew who was going to win because it was completely in the hands of the referees.

[BumperStickerist]

correct me if I'm wrong, but a rate difference of 4.5% means that one additional foul out of about 25 called.

That's one additional foul call every four games if you're doing an analysis on a player-to-player basis - unless we're talking the mid-80s Celtics and you've got Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Danny Ainge starting, and whining to the ref ....

But the stats don't go back that far.

Also, there are game situations which dictate intentional fouling to stop the clock or to prevent a guy from taking an easy shot.

Given the low incidence of the percentage - 1 in 25 - I fail to see that this amounts to much of anything.

[gmax]

Bumperstickerist, I think your math is pretty colse. They said the "bias" they detected amounted to the difference in one game a season. They suggested that having one whilte player on your team would have that same affect. Strange though that the same phenomenon was detected though to a lesser extent in black referees bias against white players.

I think Barkley had it about right last night. He just said the study was nuts and there was no bias in the NBA. If Charles thought otherwise, I think you can count on him to say so loudly and clearly.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Well, I've reconsidered.

I'm not making any judgements until Reverends Jesse and Al weigh in.

[Forbes]

Well, there's all kind of nonsense in the article (and study), including "Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating factors." In other words, they tortured the data until they got the results they were looking for.

Whether conscious or subconscious, the variables of players, referees, black and non-black, can't have more than a dozen complicating factors, much less population disparities to be controlled. What the study's authors are suggesting is that these assumptions--complicating factors and population controls--are exactly the elements the 60 referees are incorporating into the decision to call a foul, rather than just random attributes of the foul called.

And if you're looking for racial bias, look no further than Cal State's Mr. Berri, who says, "Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe you should have more African-American referees — for the same reason that you don’t want mostly white police forces in primarily black neighborhoods." Presumably, Mr. Berri believes that you wouldn't want mostly black police officers patroling white neighborhoods, either. What does that say about Mr. Berri's thinking?

And you've got to love the lead (lede)--"racial bias that exists in other parts of American society" as a given. If you look long and hard enough, you'll usually find what you're looking for--even if it exists in tortured data and 41 pages of assumptions.

What a crock.

[PatrickR]

'For mixed-race crews (which were included in their sample, and which seem to me to be predominant), the analysts do not know who called which fouls.'

Right, but that's why I said the difference is how -all-one-race officiating crews make calls from the way mixed race crews do.

Mixed-race crews call X number of fouls on black players and white players. All-white and all-black crews also call X number of fouls on black players.

The divergence is on how the same-race crews make calls against white players. It's not X for either all-white or all-black crews.

Again, as I understand it.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Forbes:
And you've got to love the lead (lede)--"racial bias that exists in other parts of American society" as a given. If you look long and hard enough, you'll usually find what you're looking for

Well, here's an idea. Dress some dudes up in Muslim garb and send them to a NASCAR race.

Oh wait. Of course. It's been done

[Other Tom]

Or have 'em start praying loudly and ostentatiously as a group in the airport just before getting on a plane, shouting "Allah akbar" and other crap like that, and then have them get on the plane, shift seats, and order seat belt extenders that they don't need. The racist bigots will come jumping out of the woodwork, won't they? God, what a bigoted society we have here.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Or have a black stripper claim she was raped by a college sports team and all sorts of racist bigots have the gall to actually look at the evidence to question her claims.

[TimUSSRR]

Ah statistics again. Seems to be a recurring subject.

The NBA has done its own atudy/analysis to
(of course) refute the academic study.

They find surprise, surprise no appreciable
bias. Of course they aren't going to share
their data which is specific official related.
This is because of contracts with same
officials, or the man in the moon.

I will always go with the study that shows
it's basis rather than one that self servingly
disagrees but hides the basis.

The NBA doesn't want people to be watching
the game on TV or from the stands and
counting who fouls who and when.
Likewise they don't want their multimillionare
stars demanding officials of like color.

Many here have good points as to other variables in
the games and in the personnel. The academic
study passes all that by and only looks at the
race of the person being called and the makeup
of the officiating team.

You can get more particular results, with other
variables but that can't dismiss the findings of
the academic study's broad scope.

[BumperStickerist]

Sure I can dismiss the findings using the 'okay, so what?' OKSW response.

The most that study has shown is that 17% of the league would incur 25 fouls while 83% of the league would incur 26 fouls. It takes six fouls to foul out of a game.

HOWEVER

those fouls lead to foul shots which would typically yield 1.6 points per additional foul

once every 4 games.

IF

the foul occurs after the team has used up its team allotment of fouls

and IF

the racial composition of the refereeing crew matches that which exhibits bias

AND

the teams that are playing have white dudes
on the court.

SO

I agree wtih the poster above that there's been some data torturing taking place.

What's telling is this: The people who did the study know which specific players and crews account for the foul differential.

There is tape of the games in question.

Add Warner Wolf to the study team and 'Let's Go to the Video Tape!'

------------------------

If the study shows that there's a bias towards calling fouls on specific players in order to get the team into foul trouble, which affects the style of play - that's one thing.

I don't think that race would be a factor in that, but rather Tom's 'Playing Style' factors would come up.

Also, there's a coaching question of 'go out and foul the guy' to get him off his game. You'd put in a low minutes guy to go do that whose stats would match up with another low stats guy, who may not be put into that same situation.

[Joe Peden]

From the study, "Black players receive about the same number of fouls per game (2.55 vs 2.53) as white players,
but receive fewer fouls per 48 minutes played (4.33 vs. 4.97)."

Since there are about twice the number of white refs as black refs, the black refs must be very exceptional racists indeed.

Unless we consider nuanced factors such as, "The [above] differences in foul
rates largely reflect the fact that white players tend to be taller, heavier, and more likely
to play center than black players."

But than my eyes glaze over and I reflexly exclaim, "Say what, Boss?".

[PatrickR]

'Also, there's a coaching question of 'go out and foul the guy' to get him off his game. You'd put in a low minutes guy to go do that whose stats would match up with another low stats guy, who may not be put into that same situation.'

And, at the end of a game it's common for the team that's behind to start fouling deliberately, hoping the free throw shooter will miss and they can get the ball back to shoot a three-pointer. How did they control for that?

[Forbes]

hit and run:

You could carry out an emergency response drill at the local school, utilizing a Christian sect as the mass murdering perpetrators du jour.

No sense looking for real examples of outrageous behavior--just make it up.

[Barry Dauphin]

If they want to study something worthwhile about the NBA, they could watch game films from the 60's & 70s compared to the 90's & 00's and measure the detection rate of travelling violations, because apparently the rules have changed---you now get 4-5 steps without dribbling and get to move your pivot foot a lot these days.

[PatrickR]

Well, now that I've read the study, they've made a mountain out of a molehill. I expect that as the paper moves through the refereeing (no pun intended) process it will get hammered.

They even concede what I think is obvious, they have picked up some REACTION by the players to different styles of refereeing. Anyone who's ever sat on the floor at an NBA game knows that the players know where the refs are most of the time. Which is why rookies have such a tough time adjusting; the veterans know how to cheat.