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.