Penn/Cornell NBA study: Blacks called for more fouls

[billhoward]

Story in The New York Times May 2 says white referees call fouls on black NBA players more frequently, up to 2.5% to 4.5% more than expected. There's a slightly lesser instance when a black officiating crew calls fouls on whites in the NBA. It's by a Penn professor, Justin Wolfers, and Joseph Price, a Cornell economics grad student. The story says Wolfers/Price sought to weed out factors like home and away games, player rookie vs veteran status, position (centers are whiter than other positions, but don't tell that to Shaq), intentional fouls (guys put in late in the game to hack away), player assertiveness (measured by steals and assists), head coach assertiveness, and then compared for the number of whites and blacks in the three-person officiating crews.

In statistical terms, black players receive 0.12 to 0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played with an all-white officiating crew vs. an all-black crew. In practical terms, for each additional black player you have on court relative to other team, your odds of winning fall from 50% to 49%, 48%, etcetera.

Blacks played 83% of the minutes in the NBA during the 10-year period studied. Whites were 68% of the refs. The three-person crews were all white 30% of the time an two-thirds white another 47%. The NBA says the study is wrong but (what a surprise) won't make accessible its even-more thorough database. The NY Times showed the study to third-party experts who said the research paper's conclusion made more sense than the NBA's.

If the link above doesn't work (may be subscribers only), here's an open link to the entire paper: http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/sports/20070501-wolfers-NBA-race-study.pdf. If you want to know about Price, here's his Cornell page (which the NYT cited, too, so I'm not like invading his privacy): www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jpp34

The list cited by the Times seemed pretty comprehensive, but I didn't see anything sociological, for instance, that if NBA-bound blacks grow up poorer or in more violent communities than NBA-bound whites, maybe they're more prone to fouling. But that's a reach, and if that were the case, then refs of all colors would see it.

[ugarte]

[quote billhoward]Story in The New York Times May 2 says white referees call fouls on black NBA players more frequently...[/quote]

Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before reading the study, [Dallas Mavericks owner Mark] Cuban said, "No comment."

He then excused himself to try and get Steve Nash back.

[KeithK]

Bill, your subject line is misleading.  The study concludes that there is a positive bias toward players when the referee is the same race and a negative bias when they are of different races.  They try to demonstrate that there is racial bias both ways.

Now it's true that there are more white refs than black in the league and more black players. So strictly speaking your subject line may be true. But it distorts the conclusion here making it sound like "white refs are racists" rather than everyone has subconcious racial biases.

As always with a study of this kind I'm a little skeptical (not having read the whole paper). There are just too many things to control for and many of them are subjective ("head coach assertiveness"?) But it's not a shocking or even particularly troubling result.

Of course, this also points to one of the reasons I've never liked basketball much.  Way too many foul calls that seem to be very subjective.

[Josh '99]

[quote KeithK]Of course, this also points to one of the reasons I've never liked basketball much.  Way too many foul calls that seem to be very subjective.[/quote]Many penalties in hockey are just as subjective.

Which isn't to say that you should start liking basketball, of course.

[billhoward]

It cuts both ways but with most of the refs white and the players black, the majority of the subconsciously racially biased calls would be on black players. That was also the context of the lead paragraphs of the article. Or, as Wolfers said, "It suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you'd win a few more games." He didn't say that if you painted the refs black, you'd lose fewer games.

I thought about the subject line as I wrote it and opted to cram in as much as possible: Penn ... Cornell (even though the Cornell angle is secondary) ... NBA, plus something to make you want to read more.

I thought about something neutral and wimpy such as "Academic study discusses offiating trends in professional sports." Like that'd have people clicking the Read button.

Speaking of racial bias and pre-formed opinions: Fun to see how well a middle-age white guy like David Stern can dance the next couple days. The material attributed to him such as that the NBA's greater reserch data "at the end of the day ... is personnel data" sounds a bit defensive.

It's going to be an easy week for the Letterman and Leno monologue writers.

[DeltaOne81]

[quote KeithK]But it's not a shocking or even particularly troubling result.[/quote]

How about not shocking, but still troubling? Or at least unfortunate.

[BCrespi]

This has gotten some pretty significant run already, at least on NY talk radio (1050 ESPN).  Listening to Stephen A. Smith and his sidekick Mike something discount the study off-hand, without reading it, and saying (Mike said this) something to the effect of, "Those academics should stay in their Ivy League think-tanks and leave the sports to people who have any credibility," made me want to jump through my radio.  Luckily, I just turned it off.  However, ignorance like this, in which analysts refuse to even read what they are commenting on, much less, understand that a couple percentage points above chance might be statistically significant drives me moderately insane.  I guess I need to pick my spots better with which shows I listen to.  

Anyway, I'm going to go back to working, being depressed about Phil Hughes, and preparing to forget this garbage and enjoy Slope Day this weekend.  Oh, and LGR(angers)!

[oceanst41]

On WEEI here in Boston Dale and Holley were joking around with the report too, but they didn't tell the Ivy League to keep to themselves. Granted I may have missed some dialogue, but they basically passed it off as nothing to really worry about. I definitely missed their original introduction of the study, so by the time I tuned in it was more their running joke to pick on Holley (who is African-American).

Your ears will perk up when you are tuning in for Red Sox talk and here discussion of a Cornell grad student though.

[Robb]

[quote billhoward]
I thought about something neutral and wimpy such as "Academic study discusses offiating trends in professional sports." Like that'd have people clicking the Read button.[/quote]

Yeah, right.  It's the offseason.  I'd click on a thread titled "Click here to watch paint dry."  

::popcorn::

[Rita]

[quote Robb][quote billhoward]
I thought about something neutral and wimpy such as "Academic study discusses offiating trends in professional sports." Like that'd have people clicking the Read button.[/quote]

Yeah, right.  It's the offseason.  I'd click on a thread titled "Click here to watch paint dry".  

::popcorn::[/quote]

FYP :-)

[RichH]

[quote BCrespi]This has gotten some pretty significant run already, at least on NY talk radio (1050 ESPN).  Listening to Stephen A. Smith and his sidekick Mike something discount the study off-hand, without reading it, and saying (Mike said this) something to the effect of, "Those academics should stay in their Ivy League think-tanks and leave the sports to people who have any credibility," made me want to jump through my radio.  Luckily, I just turned it off.  However, ignorance like this, in which analysts refuse to even read what they are commenting on, much less, understand that a couple percentage points above chance might be statistically significant drives me moderately insane.[/quote]

You must really enjoy Joe Morgan, then.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2005-07-06/news/say-it-ain-t-so-joe/full

All-in-all, it's along the same lines as the Cornell research from the late '80s about how sports teams wearing black tend to be more aggressive than those wearing other colors.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3346809&dopt=Abstract

I think this current paper will get more play in the media because it's more culturally relevant and touches on the not-at-all incendiary topic of racism.

[RichH]

[quote Robb][quote billhoward]
I thought about something neutral and wimpy such as "Academic study discusses offiating trends in professional sports." Like that'd have people clicking the Read button.[/quote]

Yeah, right.  It's the offseason.  I'd click on a thread titled "Click here to watch paint dry."  

::popcorn::[/quote]

At least we're not into the Trebuchet discussion portion of the offseason yet.

http://elf.elynah.com/read.php?1,24094,24116#msg-24116
http://elf.elynah.com/read.php?1,24438

[KeithK]

[quote DeltaOne81][quote KeithK]But it's not a shocking or even particularly troubling result.[/quote]

How about not shocking, but still troubling? Or at least unfortunate.[/quote]
Oh, it's certainly unfortunate that people have ingrained biases towards people that are like them (racial, ethnic, religious, whatever). I say it's not particularly troubling because the effect, if real, appears to be small if still measureable.  There's no allegation here that the league or white refs are trying to screw black players.  That would be very troubling.

[KeithK]

I would've chosen something closer to "Penn/Cornell NBA study: Race influences foul calls".  That's closer to accurate and still has the catchy "race" word.

I want mor trebuchets!

[Beeeej]

[quote Rita][quote Robb][quote billhoward]
I thought about something neutral and wimpy such as "Academic study discusses offiating trends in professional sports." Like that'd have people clicking the Read button.[/quote]

Yeah, right.  It's the offseason.  I'd click on a thread titled "Click here to watch cheese age".  

::popcorn::[/quote]

FYP :-)[/quote]

FYP.  :-)