Racist Refs...?

[illwauk]

And in other news... grass is green.

why would they publish a story like this other than to agitate people. i'd like to know the source of the study. When i watched the mavs/heat series last year, the only fishy officiating i saw was when it started to favor the heat. btw, i have/had no vested interest in either team. if anything officiating seems to favor certain star players but nothing to suggest its a black/white issue. There again i don't spend my time trying to find racisim in every aspect of my life.

Because the New York Slimes likes to create a racial divide and paint the US as an unfair racist country and they are finding the oddest stupidest most irrelevant methods they can.

Gotta love the "racism was erraticated in the 60's" mentality. Like you wouldn't be writing this off as some left-wing conspiracy if it were any other paper in the world. Oh, but that's right... our media is somehow controlled by the left even though all media outlets are owned by one of 8 conglomerates.

[DEAD!]

"You can use statistics to prove anything, 14% of all people know that"

-Homer Simpson

98% of us will die at some point in our lives.

.... while 100% of DEAD! people have a 50% chance of either living or dying while maintaining a 28% chance of surviving a plane crash as 60% of all the people they come across are constipated.

[McCall]

"You can use statistics to prove anything, 14% of all people know that"

-Homer Simpson

98% of us will die at some point in our lives.

.... while 100% of DEAD! people have a 50% chance of either living or dying while maintaining a 28% chance of surviving a plane crash as 60% of all the people they come across are constipated.

That is like so true.

And I'm about 2/15 Native American.

(800 posts! Yay! About.....5/28 of the way to mediocrety on this board.)

[Epiphanic]

http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/NBARace.pdf

There's the paper in question.

The the coefficients are very small. The effect isn't much regarding the foul rates. Looking at Table 3, there's more of a change in the foul rates of white players. There isn't any change in the foul rates of black players. Further more, the foul rates of black players for white and black officiating crews are virtually identical to the overall mean. To me, this suggests more of "reverse racism" where black referees are discriminating against white players more than white referees are discriminating against black players.

Although I don't buy that conclusion either. Looking at Table one there are about 4 black starters/team. I think it's reasonable to assume that they are the best players on the team. We can extrapolate from that assumption to argue that typically, white players are not as talented as black players in the NBA (otherwise they would be starting). The increased foul rates of white players can be explained two ways from this assumption.

(1) Bench players are sometimes put in to foul late in games. If more white players are bench players, then whites will commit fouls at a greater rate.

(2) Bench players have a lower talent level, so they play "sloppier" and thus draw more fouls. Again, if whites typically are worse then they will commit more fouls due to their "sloppy" play.

The numbers are statistically significant, although most at the 10% level, which is fairly weak. But given that white players are typically bench players they should naturally have a higher foul rate for reasons given above. Furthermore, the coefficients are quite small so any effect that is there isn't affecting the outcome (I suppose with the exception of an extremely close game).

Is there racism in officiating? Possibly, but we can't conclude that from this study.

[24 Hour Charleston]

Racist Refs...?, Study on NBA Refs says so

Read for yourselves (and please no racism):

To me, this suggests more of "reverse racism"

Reverse racism = racism. It's like absolute value. |-2| is 2.

[evobost]

Anyone hear Charles Barkley sound off on this study, he completely misunderstood the study. He was like of course there are more fouls called on blacks, there are more on the court. I was listening to his interview on the Dan Patrick show, I have just a statistics course or two under my belt, but I was just like Charles you're an idiot, thats obviously not what they are saying. Like dsgitlin said, there are complicated equations to control for the mere number of total fouls called against black and white basketball players. The authors of this study must be saying, Wow Charles you're an idiot.

[OnWis97]

"You can use statistics to prove anything, 14% of all people know that"

-Homer Simpson

98% of us will die at some point in our lives.

That statistic has a 2% margin of error.

[24 Hour Charleston]

We became aware of this [study] late last year," said Brian McIntyre, the NBA's senior vice president for basketball communications. "In 2006, this same study showed there was no bias. ...

"There is a fundamental flaw [in the study]. They did it off box scores out of the newspaper. So they assigned this not to individual referees but to the three-man crew. So you have no way of knowing who made the calls. Was it the white official? Was it the black official? Or was it an Hispanic official? They don't know. So they made a big leap."

McIntyre also disputes the study's claim that the NBA refused to provide so-called underlying data.

"We gave them data on every one of our 148,000 calls," he said. "What we wouldn't give them was the names of the particular officials. We are not going to do that. We assemble our information, not for racial purposes. We do this for our training and for the evaluation of our officials. ... We believe that 95 or 96 percent of our calls are right. We don't want to publicize the guys who make a higher percentage of good calls or bad calls. It's not fair to the official."

How do you know which referees made the calls? Oops!

[BaltimoreFan]

I think this is one of the stupidest things ever. Its just pointing out racism over something stupid to try and raise a stir.

A few things I think are flawed. For one it says that 83% percent of minutes were played by black players. So, only 17% were white, that seems like a small sample size to compare with the other. I know they have statistics to "even" it out, but it still seems pretty small. Also wouldn't it be better to look at the legitimacy of the calls. I mean the definition of a foul has nothing to do with race. Maybe it just so happens that black players are more aggressive than white ones, therefore making more contact. A better study would be to look a questionable calls and to see how they go.

[24 Hour Charleston]

An even BETTER study would be to know whether the referees are black or white instead of pulling it out of your ass!

[charger77]

Or has anybody considered that black players may just make more fouls?

Most times the simplest solution is the correct one.

[DEAD!]

Or has anybody considered that black players may just make more fouls?

Most times the simplest solution is the correct one.

... is that because there are more black players? ... *cough*

[koizim]

"You can use statistics to prove anything, 14% of all people know that"

-Homer Simpson

Me lose brain?!?!

Uh-oh.

-Homer Simpson

[NJTank]

Or has anybody considered that black players may just make more fouls?

Most times the simplest solution is the correct one.

... is that because there are more black players? ... *cough*

Hmmmmmmmm maybe

Oh and perhaps many white players are from Europe where they play a less physical brand of basketball.

[DEAD!]

Or has anybody considered that black players may just make more fouls?

Most times the simplest solution is the correct one.

... is that because there are more black players? ... *cough*

Hmmmmmmmm maybe

Oh and perhaps many white players are from Europe where they play a less physical brand of basketball.

... and then there's Yao Ming....

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Yes, and because they can't easily discern if ALL black players are more aggressive and ALL white players are Europeans, they try to control for variables and answer a question. Epiphanic had the best, most detailed, most demonstrating-he-understood-the-damn-paper analysis. The rest here is just so much silliness.

[Epiphanic]

An even BETTER study would be to know whether the referees are black or white instead of pulling it out of your ass!

Have you even read the study? Or the articles about it? The study controlled the racial composition of the refereeing crew. Judging from your previous posts, it seems that you haven't a hold on what this is exactly trying to say.

[HedleyLamarr]

Yes, and because they can't easily discern if ALL black players are more aggressive and ALL white players are Europeans, they try to control for variables and answer a question. Epiphanic had the best, most detailed, most demonstrating-he-understood-the-damn-paper analysis. The rest here is just so much silliness.

*whistle*

[DEAD!]

Yes, and because they can't easily discern if ALL black players are more aggressive and ALL white players are Europeans, they try to control for variables and answer a question. Epiphanic had the best, most detailed, most demonstrating-he-understood-the-damn-paper analysis. The rest here is just so much silliness.

*whistle*

shouldn't gitlin be on the bench? .... he's getting into foul trouble....

[Fred T. Jane]

*whistle*

Are you a black referee?