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

[coolhandluke]

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.”

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.

“We think our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and demonstrates that there is no bias,” Mr. Stern said.

Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound. The N.B.A. denied a request for its underlying data, even with names of officials and players removed, because it feared that the league’s confidentiality agreement with referees could be violated if the identities were determined through box scores.

The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer review before publication in an economic journal, but several prominent academic economists said it would contribute to the growing literature regarding subconscious racism in the workplace and elsewhere, such as in searches by the police.

Link to complete article

Link to study (pdf)

 

[target]

without looking at the study and how it was conducted, I have to say I am not suprised by their results. there are far less caucasian players in the league than there are african american. without looking up anything, I'm pretty sure the on average, african american players get a more PT than caucasian ones, so if you are playing more minutes of course you are going to get more whistles.

 

[Warhawk]

without looking at the study and how it was conducted, I have to say I am not suprised by their results. there are far less caucasian players in the league than there are african american. without looking up anything, I'm pretty sure the on average, african american players get a more PT than caucasian ones, so if you are playing more minutes of course you are going to get more whistles.

I think these are probably per unit time, not absolutes. Like a "per 48" statistic.

 

[uolj]

Yeah, I'm guessing the study takes minutes into account, otherwise it would be easily dismissed.

Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound.

This is the part that is interesting to me and makes me curious to see where this goes.

 

[vj9999]

Don't they have anything better ot spend their time and money on?!?

Maybe Sharpton can chime in and let us know how these poor players are being mistreated and can't feed their families.

 

[DocHolliday]

This is crap. There are more players black players, they more athletic, and can therefore be more aggressive. Pure and simple. Aggressive play usually leads to a foul or two.

 

[uolj]

Don't they have anything better ot spend their time and money on?!?

Maybe Sharpton can chime in and let us know how these poor players are being mistreated and can't feed their families.

Studies like this (and this one in particular) aren't specifically relevant to the NBA, but they are certainly not a waste of time. Identifying systematic preferences due to race in society is a worthy endeavor. This study just uses the NBA as a vehicle because of certain factors that potentially make the statistics clearer.

This is crap. There are more players black players, they more athletic, and can therefore be more aggressive. Pure and simple. Aggressive play usually leads to a foul or two.

Did you read the study or the article? I'm not saying it is entirely accurate but your statement is more illogical than their findings.

 

[uolj]

From the study:

Frank and Gilovich (1988) have shown that referees tend to call a larger number of fouls on teams wearing black jerseys.

So that's what happened in 2002!!

 

[Gargamel]

The numbers have probably spiked higher since Chris Mihm's injury.




(refs don't like him)

 

[love_them_kings]

First of all, I find it very hard to give any merit to this study just because I think there are more relevant factors to the number of fouls that are called are on a player than their race. How about an analysis by position?? Obviously there are positions where you are more likely to get a lot of fouls called on you because you are in the thick of things. Maybe there's actually a discrimination by the referees not by race, but by the positions players play?

Seriously, I'd bet there's a bigger correlation between position played and foul calls then race. Of course, if you did an analysis of positions by race, you'd notice that it's often the white players don't end up as often in certain positions for obvious reasons.

 

[uolj]

They did do analysis by position (at least from the part that I looked at).

Also, according to the study the race bias went both ways, which would make it less likely to be explainable by these other factors anyway.

 

[vj9999]

I wonder how big is the bias agianst Chinese players. Yao fouls out alot.

 

[Bricklayer]

Ok, just glancing through the study (and btw having met the Wharton professor in the past) here's the crux:

1) its a fairly rigorous paper -- takes into account most of the questions/complaints mentioned so far in this thread (note it lumps basically all "non-blacks ("black" itself being a highly subjective term) in as "white", including Asians, hispanics, whatnot)

2) it finds that white and black referrees call a similar number of fouls on black players -- hence it is NOT saying that white refs call more fouls on black players

3) it finds that there is a statistically significant difference in how many fouls are called by white refs on white players (0.18 fouls/48 -- statistically relevant, although obviously not exactly a jump out at you statistic)

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

4) now having both published and read many academic papers before, I've seen this pattern in the past in other settings. So here is the rub:
a) white refs and black refs call the same number of fouls on black players
b) white refs and black refs call different numbers of fouls on white players
c) the story has been spun as white refs are favoring white players
d) HOWEVER, that assumption only works if we assume that black refs are calling the "correct" number of fouls, and that the (more numerous) white refs are varying from it. Given that there is no baseline of "neutral colored ref", you could just as easily spin the story as black refs discriminate against white players. In the paper this is addressed just before the Conlusion, in the "Who Discriminates?" and "Who is discriminated against?" sections on page 28-29.

 

[Jerryaki]

^^ nerd.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

What about white stiff players who foul nearly every minute they are on the court? Eric Montross anyone?

Could it really just be the nature of the position and the style of player? Maybe if Brad Miller could still run he'd get called for more fouls?

 

[Bricklayer]

What about white stiff players who foul nearly every minute they are on the court? Eric Montross anyone?

Could it really just be the nature of the position and the style of player? Maybe if Brad Miller could still run he'd get called for more fouls?

No, the study is far more sophisticated than that.

Its not a study of who commits more fouls overall (white players, slightly, per minute) -- its a study of how those same players do when faced with referees of different races. So Eric Montoss might have been a hack and committed 4 fouls a game, but the study suggests he might only commit 3.9 a game wiht white refs, and 4.1 a game with black refs, and that discrepancy is its focus.

 

[nbrans]

Here's an excerpt from John Hollinger's Insider blog that I found pretty interesting:

"The basketball world is buzzing today over an academic study on racial discrimination by NBA referees, which states that the racial composition of a three-man officiating crew can have an impact on a game's outcome.

In particular, the study states that the difference between how white referees treat black players and how they treat white players is "large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew."

Predictably, the NBA has launched a PR offensive defending its officials' work and saying its own study, which looked at individual refs who made a call rather than the results of a three-man crew, showed no bias by the officials.

But the bigger point that everyone is missing is that, in fact, this study showed remarkably little bias as well. Maybe I'm a cynic here, but I had expected there would be some level of bias by both black and white officials -- refs are human too, after all, and when they step on the court they unwittingly bring their life experiences and values with them.

Yet the affect is almost totally insignificant. The study reports that a black player will rack up an added 0.16 fouls per 48 minutes with an all-white officiating crew, as compared to an all-black one.

In other words, if he plays 3,190 minutes in a season -- the league-leading total posted by LeBron James this year -- he would pick up 11 extra fouls. Eleven.

Even that scenario depends on the difference between all-black and all-white crews, which isn't realistic -- in reality most games will be officiated by a mixed crew (32 percent of the league's officials are black), so the effect will be much smaller. Thus, the difference between a black player and white player of similar skills and abilities would be something like six or seven fouls all year, out of the 200 or more that most players accumulate in a season. That's if you lead the league in minutes, mind you -- it would be much less for anyone else.

So when the authors talk about a noticeable impact on results, I guess it depends on what they mean by "noticeable." The authors chose to play up the fact that a bias was found, but to me it's even more of a story that it was found to be so small."

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blo...r_john&campaign=rsssrch&source=john_hollinger

 

[uolj]

I'd have to agree with that (at least from what I've seen so far). As I said earlier, this is an interesting story about society, not about the NBA. The study isn't saying that NBA referees are racist. It's just saying that there is an inherent difference in actions based on race.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

No, the study is far more sophisticated than that.

Its not a study of who commits more fouls overall (white players, slightly, per minute) -- its a study of how those same players do when faced with referees of different races. So Eric Montoss might have been a hack and committed 4 fouls a game, but the study suggests he might only commit 3.9 a game wiht white refs, and 4.1 a game with black refs, and that discrepancy is its focus.

Ok so basically its the newspaper article about the study that's rubbish and perhaps not the study itself, although the NBA thinks the study is inaccurate. Thanks for taking the time to read the entire study.

 

[uolj]

I didn't see where the newspaper article made any claims to the contrary.

 

[coolhandluke]

So when the authors talk about a noticeable impact on results, I guess it depends on what they mean by "noticeable." The authors chose to play up the fact that a bias was found, but to me it's even more of a story that it was found to be so small."

This is exactly what I gathered from the study. In reality, this may well be an endorsement of the job done by the NBA referees!

 

[coolhandluke]

Ok, just glancing through the study (and btw having met the Wharton professor in the past) here's the crux:

1) its a fairly rigorous paper -- takes into account most of the questions/complaints mentioned so far in this thread (note it lumps basically all "non-blacks ("black" itself being a highly subjective term) in as "white", including Asians, hispanics, whatnot)

2) it finds that white and black referrees call a similar number of fouls on black players -- hence it is NOT saying that white refs call more fouls on black players

3) it finds that there is a statistically significant difference in how many fouls are called by white refs on white players (0.18 fouls/48 -- statistically relevant, although obviously not exactly a jump out at you statistic)

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

4) now having both published and read many academic papers before, I've seen this pattern in the past in other settings. So here is the rub:
a) white refs and black refs call the same number of fouls on black players
b) white refs and black refs call different numbers of fouls on white players
c) the story has been spun as white refs are favoring white players
d) HOWEVER, that assumption only works if we assume that black refs are calling the "correct" number of fouls, and that the (more numerous) white refs are varying from it. Given that there is no baseline of "neutral colored ref", you could just as easily spin the story as black refs discriminate against white players.In the paper this is addressed just before the Conlusion, in the "Who Discriminates?" and "Who is discriminated against?" sections on page 28-29.

Good summary. Nice work!

 

[bibbinator]

It's an interesting study.

One problem with it is that it's looking at a very small sample of very peculiar people. The personal preferences and styles of the refs and players may have a bigger impact on how they play and call games than their skin color.

 

[dukeswh]

Found this article in foxports. Quite interesting. Here's the Link: http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6767806

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

Refs are bad, but they're not racists
FOXSports.com
Move over Don Imus, here comes Bernie Fryer.

And Jess Kersey. And Bob Delaney. And Dick Bavetta.
And all those other subconscious racists who let their inner prejudices dictate the way they call an NBA game.

Or so a new study by Justin Wolfers and Joseph Price would have us believe.
Are you freakin' kidding me?
Wolfers, an assistant professor at Penn's Wharton School, and Price, a grad student at Cornell, conducted an exhaustive study of the racial composition of NBA officiating teams and how that affected calls over a 13-year period from 1991 to 2004. Their conclusion: white refs are racist. And so are black refs, only less so.
I did a seven-minute study of Wolfers and Price that consisted of reading two stories, one in the New York Times, the other on the AP wire, and reached this conclusion: Justin Wolfers and Joseph Price are colossal idiots. And their schools should be embarrassed.
When I began the Times' article I was intrigued. Racism, subtle and overt, remains a real problem in this country and, hey, I'm always looking for ammunition against the NBA refs who have marred so many big games with their ineptitude. But then I read the methodology of this study and just about choked on my bagel.
From the Times:
"To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores."
Publicly available box scores? What? Here I was thinking these guys had broken down game tape for 13 years and really discovered something.
No, they studied only the fairly useless raw data of box scores. While, with a little digging, you can figure out the race of the players and the refs in a box score, here are some things you can't learn from that little square of agate type:
1. Which ref made which calls?


So a crew may be comprised of two white refs and a black ref, but a box score won't tell you if the white refs were harsher on the black players. In fact, using Wolfers and Price's methodology, a rogue black ref gone whistle-happy on his own people would actually count against his white counterparts in their study, since their conclusion would be that a white-dominated crew unfairly targeted the black players. Stupid.
2. How many of the calls were incorrect?


Can we all please agree that the only calls that could indicate racial bias would be the erroneous calls or non-calls? If a ref gets a call right — which happens less than the NBA would like to believe — it's safe to assume that the official is not exercising his subconscious racial bias in that instance, right? I mean, he saw an infraction and he blew his whistle. Not racist. What we really need to know is how often white or black refs make bad calls against players of the opposite skin tone. But you're not going to learn that from a box score. For that you'd need a keen understanding of the game of basketball and the patience to sift through years of slow-motion replays of questionable calls, two things these academics were clearly lacking. I've seen a ton of terrible calls and non-calls in these NBA playoffs, none worse than when three white officials failed to wave off a tip-in by black Josh Howard despite obvious basket interference. Which brings me to the next horrible limitation of the Wolfers-Price methodology.
3. What about non-calls?


Some of the worst calls in basketball are the ones that are never made. But a box score cannot account for these. So let's say a white crew makes five bad calls against black players but also makes five bad non-calls that benefit black players in the same game. No racial bias, right? Except that only the calls would show up in the box. Three white refs not making a correct call against a black player — as in the Josh Howard offensive goaltending example — would seem to be exculpatory evidence of race-free officiating, but you won't find any non-calls in the box score.
4. And who is the "beneficiary" of the call?


If Allen Iverson drives to the hoop and is rewarded two free throws by a white ref on a phantom foul by Tony Parker, what would be the Wolfers-Price conclusion based on this sequence? In other words, what category would it fall into? Well, it would be another call against a black player — presumably Parker would identify as black in their study — in a game that was officiated by at least one white referee. But what about the part where a black player, in this case Iverson, benefited from the bad call? This play should be a push, race-wise, but for Wolfers-Price it counts as evidence to bolster their bogus conclusion.
5. What color is Jason Kidd?


From the Times: "Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that information to predict how an official would view the player." To predict how an official would view the player? My, how scientific. I'd love to see this anonymous former referee's predictions. What of the South Americans, Nene Hilario, Leandro Barbosa, Manu Ginobli? What of the Belgian-French Tony Parker? (Does Eva Longoria see him as black, and how does he see her?) In that split second when Jason Kidd splits a double team and takes it to the basket is a white ref really subconsciously remembering that Kidd is part-black and ready to punish him accordingly? Preposterous.
Wolfers and Price used something called "multivariable regression analysis" to reach their daft conclusion that there was an up to 4.5 percent disparity in calls (and non-calls?) depending on the racial composition of the players and the refs. Anyone want to wager that the study's margin of error was greater than 4.5 percent?
One might question the motives of people who would set out in search of racism in a business where the vast majority of the highest-paid employees and 38 percent of the refs are black. I don't. I question their half-assed methodology, which doesn't even yield half-truths.
It says nothing. It proves nothing. It is nothing. Except, of course, a distraction from the real issue of race in America.
It is also incredibly lame.
And somewhere Joel Przybilla is pissed.
Like so many big white stiffs in the NBA, the 7-foot-1 space-eater spends much of his professional life in foul trouble. Now he's forced to ponder how much worse it would be if the white refs didn't have his back. Really? For shame.

 

[Jerryaki]

"To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores." Publicly available box scores? What? Here I was thinking these guys had broken down game tape for 13 years and really discovered something.
No, they studied only the fairly useless raw data of box scores. While, with a little digging, you can figure out the race of the players and the refs in a box score, here are some things you can't learn from that little square of agate type:
1. Which ref made which calls?

that's kind of an important flaw in the methodology right there. the study says that they could only use the box scores, but tried to see the pattern for the games where certain referees were present, which isn't really that sound (i don't think adjusting and factoring for the hundreds of different officiating combinations throughtout the 13 year study period is effective).

this guy is right, this would've been a lot more intriguing had the professors actually went through game tape, but like a lot of statistical studies, they went for readily available data.

 

[uolj]

I did a seven-minute study of Wolfers and Price that consisted of reading two stories, one in the New York Times, the other on the AP wire, and reached this conclusion: Justin Wolfers and Joseph Price are colossal idiots. And their schools should be embarrassed.

So Hench didn't even look at the paper itself, he just read the articles about it, and he has reached the conclusion that they are colossal idiots? Hmmm...

1. Which ref made which calls?

Wait, didn't the paper explicitly talk about the difference between all white crews and all black crews? How does the scenario apply to that? Obviously data specific to each referee would be preferable, but short of that how is it stupid to find correlations based on the makeup of the crews? That's how statistics work, right?

2. How many of the calls were incorrect?

It doesn't matter. The paper isn't comparing total foul calls, it is comparing calls made by crews of each race against players of each race. If all the calls were right, that would mean that black players actually play differently in front of black referees and white players play differently in front of white referees. That's a possible explanation that's discussed, but it's also not very likely.

I won't go on, but seriously, that article sounds like it was written by someone who made an assumption about the conclusions of the study (and didn't even read it), then flew off the handle without paying attention to the details. It's too bad, too, because it obscures the real questions that the study brings up.

It says nothing. It proves nothing. It is nothing. Except, of course, a distraction from the real issue of race in America.

Nope, this quote applies to your article Mr. Hench, not the other way around.

 

[Jerryaki]

Wait, didn't the paper explicitly talk about the difference between all white crews and all black crews? How does the scenario apply to that? Obviously data specific to each referee would be preferable, but short of that how is it stupid to find correlations based on the makeup of the crews? That's how statistics work, right?

because of the way that the study conducted it. it automatically looked at the officiating crew as a whole and drew correlations based on the composition. it should have looked at each individual referee and then made the correlations based on that, not the other way around.

it's stupid to do this based on the composition of the officiating crew, because then wouldn't the conclusion be "this race referee will make X number of foul calls on this race player, provided that the other two officails are of this race and this race"? it's not pragmatic.

 

[Jerryaki]

It doesn't matter. The paper isn't comparing total foul calls, it is comparing calls made by crews of each race against players of each race.

but the conclusion that the paper is drawing is that the calls are then racially motivated. it totally matters whether the calls were right or not; if the calls were right, how are you going to distinguish between a ref being "racist" or merely "doing his/her job?"

 

[uolj]

because of the way that the study conducted it. it automatically looked at the officiating crew as a whole and drew correlations based on the composition. it should have looked at each individual referee and then made the correlations based on that, not the other way around.

it's stupid to do this based on the composition of the officiating crew, because then wouldn't the conclusion be "this race referee will make X number of foul calls on this race player, provided that the other two officails are of this race and this race"? it's not pragmatic.

They didn't have the data on indivual referees (the NBA wouldn't release it) and using game film was not practical for the size of the data set they were using. I agree that it would be much better, but if there is a significant statistical difference between all white crews and all black crews, then that still means something. Just because they couldn't use the best data possible doesn't make the data they did use not credible.

but the conclusion that the paper is drawing is that the calls are then racially motivated. it totally matters whether the calls were right or not; if the calls were right, how are you going to distinguish between a ref being "racist" or merely "doing his/her job?"

Of course. As I said (and I believe the paper addressed), it is possible that players perform differently in front of referees based on the referees race, and that the foul call differences were based on different player behavior rather than subconscious bias of the referee. But honestly, which do you think is the more likely explanation: the players see a referee of a different race and therefore actually commit more fouls, or the referees have a small subconscious bias that leads to calling more fouls on players of the opposite race. Either are possible, but the second seems much more likely to me. I think the paper gives other reasons why it prefers the second conclusion as well.

 

[Jerryaki]

They didn't have the data on indivual referees (the NBA wouldn't release it) and using game film was not practical for the size of the data set they were using. I agree that it would be much better, but if there is a significant statistical difference between all white crews and all black crews, then that still means something.

true, but how "significant" is it? hollinger points out (i think some posted his entry upthread) that that "significance" results in a difference of 11 extra fouls (based on race of ref) if you play as many minutes as lebron. in the grand scheme of things...that's not that significant at all.

Of course. As I said (and I believe the paper addressed), it is possible that players perform differently in front of referees based on the referees race, and that the foul call differences were based on different player behavior rather than subconscious bias of the referee. But honestly, which do you think is the more likely explanation: the players see a referee of a different race and therefore actually commit more fouls, or the referees have a small subconscious bias that leads to calling more fouls on players of the opposite race. Either are possible, but the second seems much more likely to me. I think the paper gives other reasons why it prefers the second conclusion as well.

i can agree with that. i still don't think it's all that significant though; small biases according to race are very prevalent in every aspect of life.