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Did anyone see
this story in the NYT today?
Cliff notes: a study claims that there is racial bias in calling fouls in the NBA.
My initial reaction was that it would be extremely difficult to create any study that could account for all the variables. But if you read the entire article, it appears that the study made a strong effort to do just that.
The NBA had its own study done, and came to a different conclusion. But the NYT engaged three "neutral" experts who concluded that the study finding bias was more persuasive.
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i've only read the article and not the actual paper, but here are my first thoughts:
-that actual increase in fouls called is really, really small. If you replace 3 black refs with 3 white ones (the most extreme example), the black players will have 0.12-0.20 more fouls called on them per 48 minutes (the opposite also applies, with black refs calling fouls on white players, but to a lesser extent). In the scope of a game or even season that's insignificant.
-the data in the paper showed each additional black starter a team had meant about 2 fewer victories for that team each season. That IS a significant number.
So what's the difference?
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“Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees,” they write. The paper later notes no change in free-throw percentage. “We emphasize this result because this is the one on-court behavior that we expect to be unaffected by referee behavior.”
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basically this says black players PLAY worse (points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, etc) with white referees and vice versa. Because 68% of refs are white (at the time of study, 64% now) this results in overall worse perfomance by black players.
What does this mean? Why would players play worse with referees of a different race, if the number of fouls called against them only changes minimally? That's hard to say. I don't think it's bias with the refs, but rather with the players themselves.
Gonna read the paper tonight and maybe comment more.