Is NBA officiating systemically rigged?

[Time Machine Dirk]

Hello, this is my first post here but I've been reading along for a couple of months now and also have been shortly active in the last forum under a different username.

In the aftermath of game 5 this post is about NBA officiating and my reasoned claim that NBA games and especially the playoffs are rigged big time.

But first of all let me say that I am not looking for excuses for the game 5 loss. The Mavs played bad in this game and weren't ready to compete - especially on a defensive level. Kawhi and PG came out extremely hot and there was almost nothing you could do about it with the players available for Dallas.

Nevertheless, by now it is clear to me the these games are heavily rigged by the refs. How do I know?

After the several totally obvious wrong calls, the missed foul call on KP at the rim, the foul call on his block attempt and the ridiculous two techs I got the feeling that something is systemically wrong with officiating in this series. So I decided to count the calls which were 100 % wrong and clearly against the Mavs or the Clippers. I only watched the first half of game 5 but until the end of the first quarter there were 5 calls in favour of the Clippers/against the Mavs which accounted for a point differential of at least +7 pts for the Clippers - probably more because a few calls - if done right - would just have been a change of possession in favour of the Mavs. Five clearly wrong calls in favour of one team in one quarter is really a lot and it not only makes a difference in point but also in momentum, fouls on players (for example a Kawhi offensive foul instead of a Mavs defensive and an And One) and causes a defense to adjust in a way that the players tend to avoid any body contact at all which gives the other team all the freedom to operate.

I actually also counted the calls in game 3, which we obviously won. Nevertheless, I counted 11 CLEARLY WRONG calls in favour of the Clippers and 2 wrong calls in favour of the Mavs, which accounted for minimum +13 pts for the Clippers meaning that this game would have been a blowout if being officiated correctly.

Probably the Mavs would have lost game 5 either way but you never know what happens if the Clippers don't get the momentum and point differential caused by these PURPOSELY wrong calls! 17-2 plus calls in favour of the Clippers in one and a half game cannot be by coincident. Almost no clearly wrong calls in favour of the Mavs is also quite suspect to me as bad as the officiating in the NBA is. Keep in mind that I didn't even count the 50:50 calls against the Mavs or calls which couldn't clearly be judged from watching the game on TV.

Summarizing I have to say that we win game 2 for sure with fair officiating, which would mean that the series would be 3-2 for Mavs right now and 3-1 before game 5 - which would have been again a huge momentum swing.

The big questions to me is: What can be done about systemically rigged games and officiating?

First of all, maybe one can install an independent statistic center which counts the 100 % wrong calls in favour of each team over a season or for the playoffs at least in order to make things as transparent as possible. The last 2 minutes report doesn't cut it at all imho! It is ridiculous. An NBA game lasts 48 minutes and there is a report for only the last 2 minutes in a billion dollar industry like the NBA? COME ON!!!
Secondly: Make the officials turn pro and earn a lot of money and create an officials board with a low hierarchy instead of maybe one or two people deciding who is allowed to officiate in the NBA and who gets to officiate which game. For example: In German football, a ref who makes as many, obvious and bad mistakes as Fitzgerald did in game 2, would have been granted a break of at least a few weeks. It is absolutely frustrating to see and absurd that he was allowed to officiate the Mavs again after game 2. Actually, I think no official should be allowed to officiate twice in the same playoff series.

I fell in love with the game of basketball 5 years ago and and it hurts my basketball heart deep inside to see obviously rigged games and whole series. It is just frustrating. If I'd have to bet I would say the NBA wants to see Clippers vs Lakers in the conference finals with a spectacular Lakers win in order to make sure Lebron and the Lakers brand get another title in the finals vs the Bucks and Giannis - rejuvinating the legends of old king Lebron and the Lakers in the sport of basketball with wins against the not so shiny but younger and now actually better Kawhi and Giannis.

I am looking forward to your views on the topic and your ideas regarding a possible solution.

[Davevoid]

[Kammrath]

Welcome to the board! And great first post with lots of info and data!

To me, there is just too much anecdotal evidence from my decades of watching AND there is too much financial incentive to think the NBA doesn't nudge things toward a desired outcome. 

I think the word "nudge" is correct though because for the most part the players STILL have most of the control in the outcome of the game. But I think the NBA greases the skids for certain teams because they have the "bottom line" to worry about. Making money is their primary interest, nothing else is even close.

In the game last night it truly felt like the reffing decisions helped pile on the momentum against the Mavs. Just stack two or three calls toward one team and you can potentially tip the momentum in a massive way. 

And what makes it so sneaky is that you can have a bunch of calls go toward one team and throw in the occasional call blatantly going the other way and it throws people off the scent. AND you can also call things really tight against one team (where technically it isn't "Wrong", like Luka's travel last night) but then not hold the other team to that tight standard. 

As Tim Donaghy said:

"They just kind of tell us how to call the games. And when you tell somebody how to call a game, at times it puts one team at an advantage or a disadvantage....I think the biggest lie is that they try to say that everybody plays by the same set of rules and that there’s not star treatment. But whether it’s LeBron James in the NBA or Peyton Manning in the NFL, these guys are getting star treatment because they’re the ones that generate the revenue for the league. It’s just a situation where they should come out and say that there is star treatment so that there’s nothing that’s hidden from the fans."

However, beyond the NBA, I also think there are outside forces that can work their way in to the equation as well. Once again, Tim Donaghy:

"Any time that you have a sporting event with a Vegas line to it, there’s always going to be somebody involved in organized crime trying to make a dollar off of it. So I think that they constantly are trying to get to that referee, to get to a player, to get to somebody, a trainer, or a coach who can give them inside information to where they can take advantage of it. So, I think it’s always going to be there, and it is there.....they did an internal investigation and found that 50 out of 60 officials bet, in the casinos, on the golf course, pro football or whatever, and he knew he couldn’t fire 50 out of 60 people, so what they wanted to do was just put this whole thing on me and act like I was the one bad apple in the bunch, and that’s how they dealt with it."

One final quote:

"Oh definitely. The referees hated Mark Cuban. When he came into the league, he wanted our work load to increase. He made sure we all had laptop computers, we all were responsible to review games afterwards. And he constantly called and complained to the league office about the officiating....He made Ed Rush’s job a lot harder and Rush hated Mark Cuban. And dictated to the referees what to call and how to officiate a lot of games.”

[StepBackJay]

Not sure if rigged but definitely not good at all.

[ClutchDirk]

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6Mb4iEaI.../giphy.gif

[Time Machine Dirk]

Welcome to the board! And great first post with lots of info and data!

To me, there is just too much anecdotal evidence from my decades of watching AND there is too much financial incentive to think the NBA doesn't nudge things toward a desired outcome. 

I think the word "nudge" is correct though because for the most part the players STILL have most of the control in the outcome of the game. But I think the NBA greases the skids for certain teams because they have the "bottom line" to worry about. Making money is their primary interest, nothing else is even close.

In the game last night it truly felt like the reffing decisions helped pile on the momentum against the Mavs. Just stack two or three calls toward one team and you can potentially tip the momentum in a massive way. 

And what makes it so sneaky is that you can have a bunch of calls go toward one team and throw in the occasional call blatantly going the other way and it throws people off the scent. AND you can also call things really tight against one team (where technically it isn't "Wrong", like Luka's travel last night) but then not hold the other team to that tight standard. 

As Tim Donaghy said:

"They just kind of tell us how to call the games. And when you tell somebody how to call a game, at times it puts one team at an advantage or a disadvantage....I think the biggest lie is that they try to say that everybody plays by the same set of rules and that there’s not star treatment. But whether it’s LeBron James in the NBA or Peyton Manning in the NFL, these guys are getting star treatment because they’re the ones that generate the revenue for the league. It’s just a situation where they should come out and say that there is star treatment so that there’s nothing that’s hidden from the fans."

However, beyond the NBA, I also think there are outside forces that can work their way in to the equation as well. Once again, Tim Donaghy:

"Any time that you have a sporting event with a Vegas line to it, there’s always going to be somebody involved in organized crime trying to make a dollar off of it. So I think that they constantly are trying to get to that referee, to get to a player, to get to somebody, a trainer, or a coach who can give them inside information to where they can take advantage of it. So, I think it’s always going to be there, and it is there.....they did an internal investigation and found that 50 out of 60 officials bet, in the casinos, on the golf course, pro football or whatever, and he knew he couldn’t fire 50 out of 60 people, so what they wanted to do was just put this whole thing on me and act like I was the one bad apple in the bunch, and that’s how they dealt with it."

One final quote:

"Oh definitely. The referees hated Mark Cuban. When he came into the league, he wanted our work load to increase. He made sure we all had laptop computers, we all were responsible to review games afterwards. And he constantly called and complained to the league office about the officiating....He made Ed Rush’s job a lot harder and Rush hated Mark Cuban. And dictated to the referees what to call and how to officiate a lot of games.”

Thank you for you reply and these interesting quotes. For more than twenty years my main sports focus has been on European football so I can tell you from this experience and point of view: Referees in European football are not allowed to bet and I think NBA refs definitely shouldn't be allowed to bet, as well! There have even been several scandals which hit European football hard involving betting refs and rigged games. In Germany one of those refs had been sent to prison because of what he did if I remember correctly. Additionally, even the FBI was involved in investigating into the FIFA and their corrupt functionaries like president Sepp Blatter.

This is not a way the NBA can go forward imho. Something has to change and I think the only way is that the team owners get together and force the NBA to do something about officiating. Everything the refs do has to be transparent - from their training to their ingame decisions. There is no way to have a pro sport like that without pro officials and without having a fair competition. It's ridiculous and absurd.

By the way: I counted Luka's travel call as one of the five 100 % wrong calls. I even rewinded the replay twice and found out that he definitely didn't lift his pivot foot. On the other hand, Boban did on his travel call. But the funny thing is: Those calls only go against the Mavs. The Clippers travels probably just get "overlooked". Travel calls tend to get "overlooked" anyway in the NBA - just not so much on non title contenders.

[Kammrath]

Something has to change and I think the only way is that the team owners get together and force the NBA to do something about officiating. Everything the refs do has to be transparent - from their training to their ingame decisions. There is no way to have a pro sport like that without pro officials and without having a fair competition. It's ridiculous and absurd.

Cuban came into the league with this mentality and it cost him the 2006 title and countless other games. Hopefully he is still working toward change, but doing it more quielty.

[Reunion Mav Old]

There are underlying human factors that better explain the calls that get made. There is no need to assume purposeful predetermined reasons for the calls when more normal human factors already explain the problem.

One solution is to attempt to predetermine calls by making rules our standards that state this is how this gets interpreted and called. First of all, following said rules is difficult at best but worse than that, it takes away the opportunity for a referee to make an obvious good decision on a call if he perceives the rule dictates another way to call it. 

There simply is no perfect solution. Therefore, the players best rule is to play through it.

[Time Machine Dirk]

@"Reunion Mav": Sorry, but I disagree. Wrong travel calls, which are very close, should not be made against the offensive player in any case. Offensive fouls with pushing off with extended arm/elbow on the drive should be called on both sides or on neither side. When refs don't call this kind of move on Kawhi EVER but on Dallas players, I feel betrayed. The same goes for taking charges. Mavs players were often set but didn't get the call - they even got a blocking foul a lot of times. But Harrell and other Clippers don't have to be set to get the call. They just run over to the side where the drive happens, haven't even arrived yet, are not set at all and get the call. I'm speaking of obvious calls, not close ones. 17-2 obviously wrong calls in favour of one team in 1 and a half games is no prove, but a huge indication to me that something is wrong systemically, meaning the refs are told to favour a team or have some other kind of motivation.

Which human factors do you mean?

[MrGoat]

I don't think it's quite as bad as it was in the Stern era but there are still a lot of games that are clearly slanted. I saw part of Lakers Blazers game 4 and I saw the Blazers getting hosed worse than anything I've seen in a while, I turned it off in disgust and learned after the game Lillard got an injury which I'm going to assume happened because it was open season on him.

Systemic rigging isn't exactly the right term though, I remember Donaghy saying that when they slant a game it's really a 75/25 proposition because sometimes the team you are trying to help plays so poorly they are beyond what help the refs can give. An example of the 25% happening is game 6 of the 2011 Finals, the refs were clearly trying to give that one to the Heat but giving them so many free throws didn't help because they bricked so many of them in that game and were just playing rattled in general

[omahen]

NBA refs clearly have star treatment as mentioned. Kawhi is getting more and more obvious with his push offs and no call. I bet Klebers defense would look much better without this.

Refs clearly make a lot of stupid, obviously wrong calls that just make everyone mad and have no other purpose. I pointed out several examples in the past.

Refs are clearly not on par with the league quality. They should be held accountable.

[DrMav]

There needs to be a massive overhaul in officiating for me to ever put the slight bit of trust in it.

Things we need:
- Disband the ref union
- Get rid of all the leadership overseeing officiating, most of them are old refs anyway and cant be objective with their old buddies
- Live mics on replay reviews
- Last two minute report published for entire game
- Publish analytics for competency of referees 

Things I’d like to see in analytics on both an individual and crew level:
- Accuracy of made calls
- Number of missed calls
- Breakdown of types of calls made/missed
- Calls missed when in the primary position to make the call
- Calls made when in the secondary/tertiary position

I would definitely focus the analytics as a whole, but also need to specifically focus on individual teams as well as home-road splits to identify who is biased in what way, and who gets caught up in emotions of the crowd.

That is just a quickly thought out list and probably much more is needed. I acknowledge that the list has things on it that the refs and NBA would probably never go for, which just shows how likely irredeemable officiating is.

[SleepingHero]

I don't think it's rigged, but the officiating is certainly not good. 

"Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence" 

I think Hanlon's razor is perfectly applied here. Being a ref is a very hard job. If you've ever sat near the court, you can see just how fast the game is played. You have to make a quick choice in seconds, and there is a bunch of pressure. It's unrealistic to think a ref can get EVERY call correct. They're human. Plus it's easy to see stuff on camera's not in the environment of the game. Furthermore, if you've ever played competitive basketball you'd know just how much the refs can't see.

With all that said, the calls that refs often miss are quite blatant. I don't immediately jump to something fishy, but it certainly raises questions. I just think the refs need to be trained better, but their union is a bulwark. Run by a brotherhood of ineptitude and hubris. You see it whenever ESPN has their ref associate come on and agree with whatever the questionable call was.

I do believe a problem like this is insidious in nature. It will cause cracks in the NBA product. Cause people to question the legitimacy of every victory, whilst slowly degrading interest. "Why should I care about who's playing? *Insert big market team here* is going to win anyways".  People question the downturn in NBA ratings, I think the reffing issue is one of the main causes of it.

[omahen]

I don't think it's rigged, but the officiating is certainly not good. 

"Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence" 

I think Hanlon's razor is perfectly applied here. Being a ref is a very hard job. If you've ever sat near the court, you can see just how fast the game is played. You have to make a quick choice in seconds, and there is a bunch of pressure. It's unrealistic to think a ref can get EVERY call correct. They're human. Plus it's easy to see stuff on camera's not in the environment of the game. Furthermore, if you've ever played competitive basketball you'd know just how much the refs can't see.

With all that said, the calls that refs often miss are quite blatant. I don't immediately jump to something fishy, but it certainly raises questions. I just think the refs need to be trained better, but their union is a bulwark. Run by a brotherhood of ineptitude and hubris. You see it whenever ESPN has their ref associate come on and agree with whatever the questionable call was.

I do believe a problem like this is insidious in nature. It will cause cracks in the NBA product. Cause people to question the legitimacy of every victory, whilst slowly degrading interest. "Why should I care about who's playing? *Insert big market team here* is going to win anyways".  People question the downturn in NBA ratings, I think the reffing issue is one of the main causes of it.

Totally agree, very well written

[dirkfansince1998]

Thankfully Danny Crawford retired.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/blo...tml?p=9295

[Halfnir]

I totally agree with the OP. 

Being a ref is a tough job, esp. in a pro league full of professional actors. But the refs are highly paid professionals as well, so we can at least expect the same standards applied to all players, all situations and errors in judgement happening on both sides equally, maybe not in every single game, but over several games. 

What we see in the Clippers-Mavs series are two teams playing to different rulebooks consistently and this just can not happen. The amount of tiny little mistakes sums up over the game and easily accounts for an 10+ point swing in the clippers direction. A travel call here, a wrong OOB decision there, an offensive foul turned into blocking foul (or vice versa on the other side), a missed and-one call ... 

A ref has the job to make sure the game is played according to the rules and protect the players health and it is not happening.

[michaeltex]

Short night trying to see which way the damn hurricane was going. So if this is a little fuzzy, my apologies.

What if each team hires their own refs? Say a ref staff of 6, 4 regulars and 2 trainees. Trainees must apprentice for 2 years before getting into games. Refs travel with team.

Each game is then officiated by 2 home team refs and 1 visiting ref, each selected by the opposing team's coaching staff. Base salary with significant bump for games called, so you definitely want to get picked for the game.

Too much own-team bias and they don't get picked and don't get paid. Eliminates questions about league bias. Damps down superstar calls. If it gets out of balance (like 2011 playoffs) then there is the threat of a "balancer" who can help get things back to an even contest. Contested call resolution still centralized at NBA HQ via video feed, same as now.

Performance reviews after every season and contract renewal (or not) as appropriate. 

OK. I'm heading for a nap now.

[Kammrath]

What if each team hires their own refs? Say a ref staff of 6, 4 regulars and 2 trainees. Trainees must apprentice for 2 years before getting into games. Refs travel with team.

Each game is then officiated by 2 home team refs and 1 visiting ref, each selected by the opposing team's coaching staff. Base salary with significant bump for games called, so you definitely want to get picked for the game.

Too much own-team bias and they don't get picked and don't get paid. Eliminates questions about league bias. Damps down superstar calls. If it gets out of balance (like 2011 playoffs) then there is the threat of a "balancer" who can help get things back to an even contest. Contested call resolution still centralized at NBA HQ via video feed, same as now.

Performance reviews after every season and contract renewal (or not) as appropriate. 

Super interesting!

[michaeltex]

What if each team hires their own refs? Say a ref staff of 6, 4 regulars and 2 trainees. Trainees must apprentice for 2 years before getting into games. Refs travel with team.

Each game is then officiated by 2 home team refs and 1 visiting ref, each selected by the opposing team's coaching staff. Base salary with significant bump for games called, so you definitely want to get picked for the game.

Too much own-team bias and they don't get picked and don't get paid. Eliminates questions about league bias. Damps down superstar calls. If it gets out of balance (like 2011 playoffs) then there is the threat of a "balancer" who can help get things back to an even contest. Contested call resolution still centralized at NBA HQ via video feed, same as now.

Performance reviews after every season and contract renewal (or not) as appropriate. 

Super interesting!

Probably have to do something to review non-flagrant ejections if it's by the opposite team's ref so they couldn't do something like call a "T" for a ticky-tack reason, then call a 2nd "T" to the reaction to the first one. Much of that would get them de-selected for future games, so it may be self correcting.

[Mavs2019]

LMAO.

Schroeder just got straight up ejected with a flagrant 2 for hitting Tucker in the balls, while fighting through a pick. In the exact same situation with Giannis on Theis, on five fouls, they reviewed it and said NOT A FOUL.

We need a German Lives Matter protest.