How so? How much more money is being made off of San Antonio than a typical team? Please include a link that I can reference. Thanks.
On a side note much like soccer, the reffing in the NBA has caused flopping to reach all time levels. IMO this is whats truly creating a diminished product. In soccer you won't get the call unless you fall down. In the NBA you may, but it's more likely to get called if you snap your head back, scream, fall down etc...A part of me wished Yao would just fall down every time he was hacked but he played the game fair even if the officials didn't. People want to see these super athletes compete in a 100% fair environment...It's obvious with polls like these and several others out there that fans don't feel that way. If 3 out of 5 NBA fans feel that games have been victim to ref tampering then they also feel there's a good chance they will do it again and again. The only advantages should be home crowd and talent level. With advancements in technology and the amount of revenue the NBA generates, there's no reason not to make this happen.
You gave 3 examples of bias, and all were against your team. Do you have any examples of refs favoring the Rockets?
That's because no one likes to accept that their team just lost. It's much easier if you can blame an outside force. That's human nature and goes well beyond sports. Multiple studies have shown that teams don't actually perform any better on a home court across various sports. The differential is entirely in the fact that a loud crowd subtly affects ... officiating. http://www.nfl.com/features/freakonomics/episode-7 When athletes are at home, they don't seem to hit or pitch better in baseball ... or pass better in football. The crowd doesn't appear to be helping the home team or harming the visitors. We checked "the vicissitudes of travel" off the list. And although scheduling bias against the road team explains some of the home-field advantage, particularly in college sports, it's irrelevant in many sports. So if these popular explanations don't have much explanatory power for home-field advantage, what does? In a word: the refs. Moskowitz and Wertheim found that home teams essentially get slightly preferential treatment from the officials, whether it's a called third strike in baseball or, in soccer, a foul that results in a penalty kick. (It's worth noting that a soccer referee has more latitude to influence a game's outcome than officials in other sports, which helps explain why the home-field advantage is greater in soccer, around the world, than in any other pro sport.) Moskowitz and Wertheim also make clear, however, an important nuance: official bias is quite likely involuntary. What does this mean? It means that officials don't consciously decide to give the home team an advantage -- but rather, being social creatures (and human beings) like the rest of us, they assimilate the emotion of the home crowd and, once in a while, make a call that makes a whole lot of close-by, noisy people very happy. One of the most compelling (and cleverest) arguments in favor of this theory comes from a research paper by Thomas Dohmen about home-field advantage in Germany's Bundesliga, the country's top soccer league. Dohmen found that home-field advantage was smaller in stadiums that happened to have a running track surrounding the soccer pitch, and larger in stadiums without a track. Why? Apparently, when the crowd seats closer to the field, the officials are more susceptible to getting caught up in the home-crowd emotion.
Star players seem to get a lot more favorable calls from the Refs than rookies. Does that make the NBA rigged. The Knicks and the Lakers suck, but they are constantly on TV. Does that make the NBA rigged?
Sports are a show, and the refs are the emcees. If you were the NBA, wouldn't you tell your emcees to keep the show exciting?
As a former college basketball official I can tell you it is definitely not on the up and up. Blowouts on national TV games just do not hold TV ratings. Keeping the score close keeps eyes on TV's and cash registers ringing for the network sponsors who foot the bills. Quick early fouls to key players can keep a game close just as easily as giving a player the "Jordan Rules" can enhance his scoring ability for a half and keep a game close. In the NBA, series are "extended" to 7 games as often as possible. By doing this they can add 30 games or more of revenue to the season. Ever see a game 6 blowout by the team trailing 3-2 and think the calls were a little lopsided for that team. Game 7 brings money and ratings to the networks who foot the bills. In game 7, the team which will bring higher TV ratings or the "Marquise" matchup in the next round is "pushed" to move on. It is big business to add those games and even bigger business for the networks to recoup their investment with blockbuster matchups that will produce ratings. The NBA does it through "Points of emphasis" that will cripple the strength of one team or enhance the strength of the other. Donahue telling all on this type of thing is made to look like a lone nut by the NBA because he is a felon and a liar. In truth he is more like the guy who worked at Area 51 that came out on what the government was doing there and they destroyed his reputation and painted him as a lone nut. Watching the NFL playoffs Sunday is a prime example. Cincinatti had no chance of ever beating Indy and preventing the Payton/Luck matchup this weekend. Detroit was never going to beat Dallas to prevent the 2 highest Nielsen rated teams from playing this week. The Cowboys didn't need to make adjustments at half time as the league officials had already made that adjustment for them to insure their sponsor is able to recoup their investment with a ratings blowout in Green Bay. The difference in TV viewership for the Lions and Bengals advancing is huge. Nielsen ratings will be through the roof this weekend. Today the Lions got an apology for the "missed" calls. I am sure they feel better today.
I agree that there is a human element that fans confuse as ref bias/tampering. It is an easy excuse for why your team loss. However, you see people bashing their own players for mistakes just as often as the refs for missed calls. There are also games where it's pretty obvious to anybody watching, the refs are influencing the outcome. The truth is, if a good percentage of people feel something is true then chances are it is. Nobody likes a whistle blower like Donaghy or Jose Canseco, but those types are usually speaking the truth even if for unethical reasons. I disagree that 20,000 + fans cheering you on doesn't give you some positive energy that the opposing team won't get, whether it's a true advantage or not is debatable. I love strategy in NFL and NBA. I'm not going to quote scientists here, I'm using actual people that play on the field. Peyton Manning feels home field can be a great advantage and his strategies place emphasis on it. Teams going into Utah to play the Jazz is a great home court advantage. Seattle Seahawks amazing home field advantage. Houston Rockets not so much. Every year more teams have better records at home than on the road in every single sport. So you are saying this is because of the refs being influenced by home crowds. If it's influencing the refs, which makes total sense, then there is yet another reason to remove the human error element. Really my point is that technology exists, if applied properly, could take human error element out of reffing creating a better product. Don't forget to lump in greed with human error. If there's a way to make more money and 0 chance to be investigated, then most people will take more money every single time. All the signs are there, from lottery tampering to an actual ref whistle blowing about spread tampering. It is a problem the NBA is facing, but also an opportunity to bring a greater product to the people.
The NBA has a lot of structural problems that encourage this sort of thing. Games are a little too long, and so are the regular season and playoff series. Most viewers will leave when a team is up by 20 in the 3rd quarter. They will ignore a playoff series where a team is up 3-0. So the NBA has to artificially keep things close. You don't have this problem in the NFL. Comebacks are easier, and the same number of playoff games get played no matter who wins.
And with a skill set like this, refs suddenly have influence over Vegas odds makers and everyone knows the amount of money involved there. Plenty of blind people that are willing to keep shelling out money for this watered down product. Just too much money involved to get a true contest.
No you aren't and I know you'll read this. Don't respond, though, as it'll look like you lied about being out of this thread. What I'm saying is pretty simple, but I'll expand on it for you. I am saying that there are very likely rogue officials, players, and others who have been on the take for certain games here and there. People are greedy assholes, some of which get jobs in major sports. I'm not crazy enough to think that any point shaving or game manipulation started and ended with Donaghy. Just like I'm not crazy enough to think that shady stuff doesn't happen in any business to some degree. The OP's question, though, was "Is the NBA rigged?". With that, we're talking a league-wide, systematic effort to ensure certain outcomes are achieved and to suppress undesired results. The guy taking $10k to whistle a few extra fouls and cover the spread is a far cry from the entire league being rigged. And I don't think there is anything to suggest that a ref being on the take occurs all that often, either. For what it is worth, I never agreed with the premise that "we consistently have absolutely terrible mind boggling calls". They happen, but they represent a very tiny fraction of the number of calls that you see in a game. But you didn't read this, of course....
Am I correct to assume, then, that neither of you give credit to any of the players when the Rockets win, then? Only credit to the league and its officials for allowing the team you support to emerge victorious, even though it was not left up to them to decide? This thread is absolutely hilarious.
Refs influencing a game is different from a ref being biased. In a given game, let's say there are 100 calls by refs. The "bias" of those will be measured in a bell curve, just liking flipping a coin 100 times. In the median game, about 50 calls will go to each team. But In some games, 60 calls will favor one team - just like you might flip 60 heads out of 100. In the rare game, 70 or 80 will go to one team. You have thousands of NBA games a year. Some will have calls favoring one team. But what you're perceiving as bias is simply random chance. What Peyton Manning thinks is irrelevant if the facts show otherwise. Players don't shoot better at home or hit a higher average or complete more passes. If people played better at home, it should show up in independent measurable statistics - but over large sample sizes, it's just not there. We can also measure foul calls, and the stats do show a difference there. (It also does show up in overall stats like "team defense" but that's because that's affected by refereeing bias.) You can't take the human element out of refereeing unless you can define what a foul is. In some cases, that's possible - things like shot clock expiration or whether a ball crosses the goal line. That's where we've implemented replay. But you can't do it with judgment calls. In basketball, in particular, there is no bright line of "right" and "wrong" on most plays. Players make contact on every play - it's arbitrary when someone has to decide how much contact is too much. It's a sport that's defined by human judgment. People like getting rid of bias on judgment calls in theory, but it doesn't work that way in reality. We saw that with the BCS in football. They added computer ratings because pollsters are biased and unfair. And then each time the computers didn't match the humans, people complained about the computers and changed them. And now with the playoffs, they just got rid of the computers entirely. What people really don't like is results that don't match what they want to believe. Whatever the process that results in that - human or computer - will be criticized.
Have you ever charted a comparison of NBA series of 4-5-6-7 games and compared to what you'd expect from a random distribution, depending on the seeding? (1-8's should be shorter series than 4-5's, for example) What does the data show you? Maybe Cinci didn't have a chance because they simply aren't very good. If the NFL was trying to help Dallas so much, why put them in a 14 pt hole? Why call running into the punter early on? Or holding on a critical Dallas TD that could have cost Dallas the game? Both of those could easily have been not called and helped Dallas tremendously. Instead, they put a Dallas win at risk. And instead they made much more controversial calls to help Dallas?
Pretty sure I was talking about NBA playoffs. Game manipulation during the regular season really doesn't come into play too often unless a marquis franchise has a chance to get in at the end of the season. NBA rakes in the money on the post season matchups and the ability to add games.
