"Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls"

With regrets, welcome to the world. Racial bias exists in every country, on every continent where I have lived and/or visited.

USA census is microcosm of Planet Earth.

 

Yes, exactly!

 

This is very likely to be the case as suspected by many people. It is not a conscious thought but subconscious at work here and I am not sure how you can get rid of these subconscious biases.

 

That's a thought. In fact, I'd go further and say that getting former player to ref should be better. They used to complain about the calls, right? Now let them make the calls. There are way too few former players reffing.

 

Paging Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Let's fire up a protest.

 

[ESPN] Race, Officiating, and Salt Lake City

Story here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2857469

I find this absolutely fascinating. According to the article:

An academic study of NBA officiating found that white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players, The New York Times reported on its Web site Tuesday night.

The study by a University of Pennsylvania assistant professor and Cornell graduate student also found that black officials called fouls more frequently against white players than black, but noted that that tendency was not as pronounced.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at Penn's Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, said the difference in calls "is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew."

The study, conducted over a 13-season span through 2004, found that the racial makeup of a three-man officiating crew affected calls by up to 4½ percent.

The NBA claims that they did their own internal study that disproves any racial bias, but they will not release the data in their study. I have no level of expertise here, but I will note that peer-reviewed, academic studies tend to be more accurate than corporate studies where companies are evaluating themselves.

The study did not make any findings on how referees tend to officiate Asians like Yao Ming or Martians like Bonzi Wells.

You've probably guessed why I'm posting in the GARM. There are no white players in Houston's playoff rotation, while white players (Kirilenko, Okur, Harpring) play a significant role in Utah's rotation. Without getting into subconscious racial predispositions of individual referees, there is simply an interesting statistical finding here. According to the study, if we have a predominantly white referee crew tomorrow, we will be facing a measurable disadvantage relative to a predominantly African-American crew.

Are there any predominantly black crews working the playoffs? I haven't noticed. But I imagine our odds aren't good here.

 

Please post the rest of the article:

The NBA strongly criticized the study, which was based on information from publicly available box scores, which show only the referees' names and contain no information about which official made a call.

"The study that is cited in the New York Times article is wrong," president of league and basketball operations Joel Litvin told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "The fact is there is no evidence of racial bias in foul calls made by NBA officials and that is based on a study conducted by our experts who looked at data that was far more robust and current than the data relied upon by Professor Wolfers.

"The short of it is Wolfers and Price only looked at calls made by three-man crews. Our experts were able to analyze calls made by individual referees."

Litvin said the NBA's study, using data from November 2004 to January 2007, included some 148,000 calls and included which official made each call. The Times said the NBA denied a request by Wolfers and Price to obtain that information, citing its confidentiality agreement with the officials.

The study also found differences in everything from a decrease in scoring to a rise in turnovers depending on the officials' race.

"Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees," Wolfers and Price wrote.

But the key finding was in regard to foul calls, saying "black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played [an increase of 2½-4½ percent] when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three."

The NBA has an observer at each game and closely monitors its officials, who are required to file reports after each game they work and are expected to be able to explain each potentially controversial call they have made.

Litvin said in an original version of the paper, dated March 2006, Wolfers and Price came to the conclusion that there was no bias. He added that the NBA's research "all prove beyond any doubt in our minds that these guys are just flat wrong."

"They reached conclusions in their own papers that are unsupported by their own calculations," Litvin said.

Wolfers and Price are set to present the paper at meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. The Times said they will then submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal peer review before consideration by an economic journal.


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To me, this is absolute BS. Just box scores? And they don't even know which officials actually blow the whistle against black/white guys? And come on, if there are like 400 more black players in the NBA than white players, I'm pretty sure there will be more fouls called on them.

 

It'd be interesting to see how the actual study reads, because if they are only evaluating 3 men crews, then what's wrong with looking at box scores? If 2+ of the referees are black, that is a predominantly blakc 3 man crew, and if 2+ are white, then it's not.

Also, it doesn't sound like it is saying that black players have more fouls called on them than white players, just that white referees call more fouls against black players than white players. This is where, of course, it should be changed to say "predominantly white referee crews" instead of white referees, which it seems it clearly isn't given how the study was performed.

 

whoops double post

 

What I find funny is Sterns response. Says he saw it, an in March did his own study which concluded there wasnt. You go from reading a research report that was worked on from 1991-2004, and in a few months time can conclude that the other report is wrong? Give me a break. I'm not saying the one from the students is right or wrong, I just find it funny Stern comes out and says yea I did my own research in a couple months. Though it makes sense, hes obviously gotta deny it.

 

More aggresiveness means more fouls.
I wish referee were not human-being.

 

You don't understand.
They said:
- White refs call more fouls against black players.
- Black refs call less fouls againts the same black players.
Vice versa.
It's not the agressiveness or how much defense some guys play.
The players are the same, black or white.

The referrees are the variables.

 

Basically it is just affirmative action for white players.

 

The NBA's response seems a little quick to jump to a counter conclusion but they do have an important point. Without being able to determine which referee called which fouls the initial study is skewed. What if in mixed race crews of two whites and one black referee the black referee made most of the calls?

Its an interesting study but I wouldn't say its definitive.

 

On the subject of bias hasn't it long been an open secret that there is a bias in the NBA regarding star players? I remember hearing about the "Jordan Rules" that allowed stars like Michael Jordan to get away with travelling, carrying and fouls all the time under the reasoning that the fans don't like to see stars foul out and they also like to see the stars do something spectacular with the ball rather than turn it over on travelling.

 

Well, the one female referee has yet to call a single foul on a female player. ALL of her fouls called are on male players.

Sexist biatch.

 

In just looking at box scores they have absolutely no idea which ref called which foul on which player.

As an example, it is a fact that the vast majority of the players in the league are black. That being the case, the vast majority of the players on the floor in a close game at the end are black. That being the case, the losing team will invariably foul to try and regain possession. You can conclude that the vast majority of the fouls in that situation are going to be against black players. That is enough to tip the scales of the percentages.

Without reading the study, and just reading the article, it does not appear there was any in depth (i.e. game condition, who actually made the foul call, etc.) analysis done.

 

I thought about that, but there is something the UPenn paper captures that the NBA might not, which is an interaction effect within mixed-race ref crews. What if a mixed crew has its black ref calling most of the fouls, but he's subconsciously conditioned to do so because of his environment (working with white refs)? Or, what if players are actually playing differently in reaction to the racial identity of their refs? Looking at refs as individuals would disguise that interaction effect, while looking at crews would capture it. And, I don't know if you lose much by looking at crews instead of individuals. There is a large data-set with every racial mix; you can tease out the impact of having 0, 1, 2, or 3 white or black refs. Who they are isn't important to the statistics. The NBA might also track interaction effects, but they didn't say they do.

I also don't think the racial identity of the person fouled necessarily matters, though it'd probably be an interesting data element. It could be that a ref sees the interaction between the two players as a white-black competition. But, it could also be a one-sided evaluation of the fouling player. In the case of charges, I'd think you'd want to see both sides, since those are situations where fouls are often given to one side or the other. But, that data isn't easily found in box scores.

 

I'm pretty sure that she's called multiple fouls on Dirk Nowitzki and Devin Harris.

 

Those would be very hard to capture from just looking at the crews but not knowing which ref of which race called which fouls on which players or which race. To determine the interaction from just the crew would be problematic because what if the black ref working with two white refs called no fouls and the white refs called a lot? Also if you are going to determine a racial interaction of white majority or black majority crews wouldn't you then need to look at how those individual refs made calls with different crews?