Crying Foul
By Aaron Goldstein (05/10/07)
With the NBA playoffs in full throttle, The New York Times saw fit to print a front page article on May 2, 2007 concerning a study which posited that there is a racial bias amongst white referees in calling fouls against black players.
(www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/sports/basketball.02refs.html). The study was conducted by Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Joseph Price, a doctoral student at Cornell University’s Department of Economics. Wolfers and Price’s abstract reads in part, “These biases are sufficiently large that we find appreciable differences in whether predominantly black teams are more likely to win or lose, according to the racial composition of the refereeing crew.” (bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/NBA/Race.pdf).
Needless to say, NBA Commissioner David Stern was not amused. “This is a bum rap, that’s all. This is a bum rap, and if it’s going to be laid on us it should be laid on us by basis of some people who are purported to be scholars in a publication that purports to hold us up to a higher standard – a little bit more should have been done,” the NBA Commissioner stated sternly.
Stern was even more irate with The New York Times stating that it “behaved very badly, very badly.” Indeed, three days after the article was published, the Times editors disclosed that Larry Katz of Harvard University, one of the independent experts cited in the article, was the chairman of Professor Wolfers doctoral thesis committee. Oops.
I am sure Stern was less than amused that Wolfers and Price had interviewed Dallas Mavericks owner cum 9/11 conspiracy dilettante Mark Cuban for the study. The NBA has fined Cuban nearly half a million dollars for yelling at NBA officials and for other unsportsmanlike like conduct over the years.
So how did Wolfers and Price arrive at their conclusions? By using NBA box scores from regular season games from the 1991-92 season through the 2003-2004 season. These box scores contain information as to which players were charged with fouls and names the referees who officiated the game. However, the box scores do not indicate which referee called a foul against an individual player. Wolfers and Price cede this point by stating “while we cannot observe the referee who blows the whistle for each foul, our empirical strategy involves comparing the number of fouls each player earns when particular referees are present.”
Having examined the Wolfers and Price study this methodology strikes me as lacking. If you have ever watched an NBA game and see a foul called against a player what is the corresponding action? The player fouled on the opposing team gets a free throw, usually two. If we accept Wolfers and Price’s conclusions that white referees are more apt to call fouls against black players it is worth knowing if black players are more likely to foul white players or other black players. Simply put when a white referee calls a foul against a black player who gets the free throw shot? Unfortunately, Wolfers and Price do not answer this question. They do state there is “weakly suggestive evidence of a decline in free throw attempts under opposite-race referees, suggesting that defensive fouls are less likely to be called against one’s opponents when opposite-race players have possession.” But by so narrowly focusing on who gets fouled they have all but ignored who gets the free throw shot. It hardly seems fair to conclude that white NBA referees are guilty of racial bias on the basis of “weakly suggestive evidence.”
I looked at the box score of Game 2 of the Western Conference Semi Final between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs which the Suns won 101-81. (www.nba.com/games/20070508/SASPHX/boxscore.html) In particular, I was interested in the stats of Spurs forward and two time NBA MVP Tim Duncan. Four fouls were called against Duncan in Game 2. But Duncan also made seven free throw attempts netting five of them. Simply put, the fouls called against Duncan were offset by the number of times he was fouled and awarded with free throw attempts.
It is worth noting that during a game last month against the Dallas Mavericks, Duncan was ejected for laughing on the bench by referee Joey Crawford. Although Duncan was fined $25,000 for verbally abusing Crawford, the NBA saw fit to suspend Crawford for the remainder of the season including the playoffs for allegedly challenging Duncan to a fight.
I mention the Duncan-Crawford incident because if the NBA saw anything untoward by a referee against a player on racial grounds the NBA would take swift and immediate action. If white referees conducted themselves in a racially biased manner against black players doesn’t one think that the NBA’s large black fan base might sit up and take notice? Wolfers and Price contend that racial bias is significant enough that it can affect the outcome of games. This would mean the very integrity of the game and if that were true wouldn’t basketball fans turn away from the NBA in disgust and opt to follow college hoops instead? If fans were to notice such a bias then surely players, sportswriters and broadcasters would as well. If there was racial bias on the basketball court you can be sure that either Charles Barkley or Stephen A. Smith would have told us about it.
So what is this study really about? The answer can be found on page 23 when Wolfers and Price interpret the behavior of NBA referees. Wolfers and Price contend “the racial composition of the refereeing pool substantially reduces the number of games won by strongly black teams. Thus, this analysis yields intriguing evidence that the league’s historical tendency to hire white referees has a disparate impact (emphasis theirs) on black NBA players.” Wolfers and Price don’t come out and say it but if one reads in between the lines it would seem they would be favorable to an aggressive affirmative action campaign to recruit black referees as a way to offset this so-called “disparate impact”. Wolfers and Price might not have come out and said it but David Berri did. Berri, an Associate Professor of Applied Economics at California State University-Bakersfield, is one of the independent experts cited in the New York Times article. Professor Berri states, “Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe you should have more African-American referees – for the same reason that you don’t want mostly white police forces in primarily black neighborhoods.” This is rather odd reasoning. I would hardly compare refereeing in the NBA to policing the streets of Dorchester. NBA players do not risk their lives when they go out and play on the basketball court. It is also worth pointing out that blacks currently only comprise 8% of all players in Major League Baseball. Is Berri stating that only 8% of MLB umpires should be black? But let’s put the merits (or lack of merits) of affirmative action aside for now. That is another debate altogether. If an affirmative action program is Wolfers and Price’s objective then impugning the integrity of white NBA officials is not the smartest way to go about it.
It does seem odd for Wolfers and Price to target the NBA concerning the hiring of blacks. According to Richard Lapchick of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, the NBA earns an A+ for it hiring practices of women and racial minorities. It is the first time any professional sports league has earned an A+ in their study. While Wolfers and Price lament that only 36% of the referees in the NBA are black, Lapchick points out that this rate far exceeds any other professional sport. Indirectly responding to Wolfers and Price, Lapchick admonished, “So please, as you examine other smaller-focus items on race, keep the big picture in mind.”
(www.sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=lapchick_richard&id=2865144)
So what about the notion that the mere presence of white referees substantially reduces the number of games won by strongly black teams? Well, it is worth considering that during the 13 year span of the study only four NBA teams won championships. The Chicago Bulls won five of their six NBA championships during the study period, the Los Angeles Lakers won three consecutive NBA championships while the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs won two each. It is unclear how Wolfers and Price define a “strongly black team” but somehow I doubt that championship teams which included the likes of Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Robert Horry suffered any disparate impact from white NBA officials.
Getting called for fouls and shooting free throws are part of basketball. It is a fast-paced, high contact sport. Fouling is such an integral part of the game it can serve as a strategy. While Shaquille O’Neal is one of the greatest NBA players of all time he is a below average free throw shooter. So it is not uncommon for players (be they black or white) to foul Shaq so that he has to go to the free throw line. This has the affect of stopping the clock and also minimizing the number of points scored by Shaq’s team. The fouling of Shaq occurs with such frequency the tactic is referred to as a “Hack-a-Shaq”. The point here is that Wolfers and Price don’t have enough knowledge of basketball for their study to appreciate the tactical utility of committing fouls.
In the final analysis, it would seem that Wolfers and Price are looking to impose solutions on problems that do not exist. For that I am charging Wolfers and Price with a foul on the NBA and its referees. Commissioner Stern! Please approach the free throw line.
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