May 2, 2007
Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls
By ALAN SCHWARZ
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 forthcoming 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 late last year, and was moved to conduct 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 iden ies 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.
The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the N.B.A.’s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of “Pervasive Prejudice?” and an expert in testing for how subtle racial bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the author of “The Wages of Wins,” which analyzes sports issues using statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
“I would be more surprised if it didn’t exist,” Mr. Ayres said of an implicit association bias in the N.B.A. “There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, at udes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.”
Mr. Berri added: “It’s not about basketball — it’s about what happens in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you have an evaluation team that’s so different from those being evaluated. 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.”
To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and all-star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.
But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew.
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of his league’s officiating, said in a telephone interview after reading the paper: “We’re all human. We all have our own prejudice. That’s the point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this application, as in a thousand others.”
Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, “No comment.”
Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers, each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.
“If that’s going on, then it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” Mr. James said. “But I’ve never seen it.”
Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the paper’s claims. Rod Thorn, the president of the New Jersey Nets and formerly the N.B.A.’s executive vice president for basketball operations, said: “I don’t believe it. I think officials get the vast majority of calls right. They don’t get them all right. The vast majority of our players are black.”
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating factors.
For the 1991-92 through 2003-4 seasons, the authors analyzed every player’s box-score performance — minutes played, rebounds, shots made and missed, fouls, and the like — in the context of the racial composition of the three-person crew refereeing that game. (The N.B.A. did not release its record of calls by specific officials to either Mr. Wolfers, Mr. Price or The Times, claiming it is kept for referee training purposes only.)
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. About a dozen players could reasonably be placed in either category, but Mr. Wolfers said the classification of those players did not materially change the study’s findings.
During the 13-season period studied, black players played 83 percent of the minutes on the floor. With 68 percent of officials being white, three-person crews were either entirely white (30 percent of the time), had two white officials (47 percent), had two black officials (20 percent) or were entirely black (3 percent).
Mr. Stern said that the race of referees had never been considered when assembling crews for games.
With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and all-stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some subs ute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined whether otherwise similar black and white players had fouls-per-minute rates that varied with the racial makeup of the refereeing crew.
“Across all of these specifications,” they write, “we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three.”
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price also report a statistically significant correlation with decreases in points, rebounds and assists, and a rise in turnovers, when players performed before primarily opposite-race officials.
“Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees,” they write. The paper later notes no change in free-throw percentage. “We emphasize this result because this is the one on-court behavior that we expect to be unaffected by referee behavior.”
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.
“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.
The N.B.A.’s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league’s study was less formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for only 2 ½ seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007), and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul.
The N.B.A. study reported no significant differences in how often white and black referees collectively called fouls on white and black players. Mr. Stern said he was therefore convinced “that there’s no demonstration of any bias here — based upon more robust and more data that was available to us because we keep that data.”
( NBA "science" = Repug "science =" corporate "science" = you get the results you pay the s to produce!)
Added Joel Litvin, the league’s president for basketball operations, “I think the analysis that we did can stand on its own, so I don’t think our view of some of the things in Wolfers’s paper and some questions we have actually matter as much as the analysis we did.”
Mr. Litvin explained the N.B.A.’s refusal to release its underlying data for independent examination by saying: “Even our teams don’t know the data we collect as to a particular referee’s call tendencies on certain types of calls. There are good reasons for this. It’s proprietary. It’s personnel data at the end of the day.”
The percentage of the black officials in the N.B.A. has increased in the past several years, to 38 percent of 60 officials this season from 34 percent of 58 officials two years ago. Mr. Stern and Mr. Litvin said that the rise was coincidental because the league does not consider race in the hiring process.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal peer review before consideration by an economic journal.
Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other parts of American society.
“There’s bias on the basketball court,” Mr. Wolfers said, “but less than when you’re trying to hail a cab at midnight.”
Pat Borzi contributed reporting from Minneapolis and John Eligon from East Rutherford, N.J.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/sp...02refs.html?hp
Very, very interesting. Not surprising. But good data, and the data doesn't lie. You can interpret how you want, but the most logical conclusion would be that the way to avoid racism affecting foul calls is to hire more black refs, since the league is mostly black, but to make sure every game has 2 black refs and 1 white ref - so the white players don't wind up getting bum calls, either.
"White men can't jump" -Socrates
All calls are based upon this truth and they go from there.
well there are more black players and they are all thugs so it makes sense at the end
Guess Yao is screwed.
excellent logic, idiot.
ummm... 80% of the nba is black... not surprising more fouls are called on blacks. what a stupid survey...
There's more black players then white, and they are on the court more than the white guys.
I wonder if Cuban funded this "scientific" research.
I doubt it, for in the land of White basketball players the German is king
That's what the multi-variable regression accounts for moron.
Regardless of trainwreck's obvious lack of intelligence in making his comment, I do see a potential "variable" for which no regression can be run, the variable that (of all people) NorCal pointed out: what if black players are in fact more "physical" or "foul prone" than white players?
Seriously, not in some Republican apologist kinda way.
If the African American basketball culture emphasizes more physical play than the Anglo American basketball culture, this study is shot to . That's not a variable you can "control" for, because it's "racist" to make that claim, but also impossible to quantify.
I'm not saying that's the way it is, but it's worth considering, and from what I can gather from this article and the reality of statistics, that possibility was not accounted for at all.
No stone left unturned indeed. Apparently, when all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.
How about bias towards teams that send in a DVD of every 'unfair' call after every game and hire ex-refs to work for them after they hang up the whistle? Hmmm....
Oh, and BTW, this study surely doesn't take into account any personal biases which a particular referee might have against a particular player.
Take Joey Crawford and Tim Duncan, for instance.
Perhaps the animus is race-based, and I'm not sure what Crawford's statistics are for calling fouls against blacks. But Tim Duncan is about as white as any black player can be, yet there was still a clear bias he had against TD. Of course, all of those fouls were factored into the study, and all of them were made by a WHITE ref against a BLACK player, but any other underlying bias that could account for those figures was categorically ignored.
We all know refs play favorites. This study assumes race is the only possible reason for whatever "bias" the statistics reveal, when, in some cases, it has more to do with the personalities of the players and refs and NOT the color of their skin.
so a 3-man white ref team calls 0.20 more fouls per game on a black player than a 3-man black ref team? That's one foul per five games! Given all the variations in players, teams, schedules, referees, arenas, fans, etc... they can pinpoint that this tiny variation of one whistle in five games is exactly due to the skin colors of the refs and the player? I am very skeptical. This sounds like junk statistics which is purpose-built to reach a desired conclusion by an agenda-driven group.
To Ryu's point - it's considered almost a fact that white players are softer on average then black ones. When you think of white players you think of shooters or bigs who are finesse-type players. So I would like to see a study on the rates that players get fouls called in the favor. Maybe black players get fouled more than white ones in addition to getting more fouls called on them. That would back up Ryu's point that it's possible that black players in the NBA are, on average, more physical and aggressive on both ends of the court. Which is a good thing, by the way, but even though it's really a complement some will consider it to be racist.
That's a good point too. 2.5%-4.5% really isn't that much.
It could be true--but I'm gonna bet that these 'unbiased' professors went into the study expecting to find what their conclusions turned out to be.
There's no news and consequently no additional money if you find out that things are hunky-dory.
Consider also that Penn and Cornell professors, just like most people in academia, are most likely politically liberal. Is it that surprising that they came to a "liberal" conclusion with regards to racial bias?
Even though this comment obviously belongs in the political forum, I'm going to make it anyway: boutons' interjection ( NBA "science" = Repug "science =" corporate "science" = you get the results you pay the s to produce! ) reveals that he doesn't really view things with an open mind, but instead looks at the conclusion, and if it fits his predetermined agenda, supports it almost religiously, and demeans any dissent (like Stern's retort) as "Republican" and not worthy of consideration.
And you people wonder why American is such a mess right now...just look at the electorate.
That's a good reason to be skeptical every time there's a study that comes to a doom and gloom conclusion about anything.
Ryu:
You've had many interesting things to say on this topic; I was therefore surprised to see you say the above quote.
Is there, in your mind, a certain ethinc standard of behavior black people should adhere to? It reminds me of a black guy I went to school with who was called "oreo" because he didn't "act black enough". (The guy calling him "oreo" had a Hispanic father and an Anglo mother, FWIW)
That sort of thinking is ridiculous. People should be free to behave in whatever ways they will. To me, Tim Duncan is as black as Chris Wilcox, Grant Hill, Darius Miles, Jerome James, Gilbert Arenas, Chris Webber, Kobe Bryant, Richard Jefferson, Ben Wallace, and on and on and on. These men are black men, but their backgrounds and life experiences have imparted each with their own unique personality and worldview. To suggest any of them don't act black is insulting at best.
I'll untroll myself for a minute here.
I agree that people should be free to behave in whatever ways they will. And while Tim Duncan may be as physiologically as black as Michael Finley and Jason Kidd, he's certainly not "black" like Allen Iverson is. I guess what I mean by that is that he doesn't fit in to the stereotypes of black urban culture. He is, for lack of a better description, an "Uncle Tom" (I mean that in the least derogatory way possible). He doesn't get busted carrying guns or drugs. He doesn't beat his wife. He doesn't make rap albums. He doesn't get into fights or feel the need to egotistically laud his own achievements.
True, those are all stereotypes, but it's surprising how many NBA players fill them out so well. IMO, when people with racial biases look at a physiologically black man, they associate him with some or all of those stereotypes. However, there are certain black men that, despite their skin tone, are NOT associated with those stereotypes. Tim Duncan is one, and I think David Robinson is a good example of another. White people with racial biases look at these black men and see someone who "seems" white...just like Uncle Tom.
Obviously everyone has their own unique personality due to the vicissitudes of life. But there are certain qualities which pertain among members of various cultures, and racially biased people are likely to see those cultural tendencies in a stereotypical way, applying them indiscriminately to all people of a particular race. I don't think it's insulting to say that Tim Duncan doesn't act like the "stereotypical" black man in the NBA, someone like Iverson, for instance (irony alert).
But then again, I'm not black, so I'm not prone to be offended by something like that. If I offended any blacks by saying that Tim Duncan is not very "black," I'm sorry, and I hope the explanation above clarifies that I think Tim Duncan isn't "ghetto" black, whatever that means.
As a Penn alumnus, I'm glad to see my donations aren't being wasted on pointless research.
Oh, wait....
Gimme a break. The league has enough trouble finding credible referees. Now it has to worry about racial bias? Here's a scoop: most of the NBA officials are TERRIBLE. That's the bias.
maybe the thugs should get the hint and face that no one likes them. they can go to
This explains why Dirk shoots so many free throws.
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