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If the calls are so subjective that one can't tell the difference between a ref accidentally being way off and on purpose being way off, then maybe your sport/r

If the calls are so subjective that one can't tell the difference between a ref accidentally being way off and on purpose being way off, then maybe your sport/rules are the problem when being way off is either excusable or indeterminable. (in the NBA and some other sports, you can basically call a foul every play)

metabagel 8y ago
Game 3 of the NBA Finals in 2008 was pretty darn obvious. Anyone who watched that game had to have known that the game was fixed. http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3436401 http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3436401 “The Lakers attempted 40 free throws to the Kings' 25 in that game, and Los Angeles made 21 of 27 from the line while Sacramento converted 7 of 9 in the fourth quarter alone. In addition, a foul was called against Mike Bibby of the Kings after he was shoved and elbowed by Kobe Bryant, denying the Kings an opportunity to try for a tying basket. Also in that game, Kings centers Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard fouled out, and Kings coach Rick Adelman was highly critical of the officiating afterward.” It’s actually worse than that. Bryant drove into Bibby, committing an obvious offensive foul with an elbow to the nose which gave Bibby a nosebleed. Bibby was called for a personal foul for his nose fouling Kobe in the elbow.
- paultannenbaum 8y ago
  I think you mean 2002 not 2008. And yeah that game sure did seem skewed in the lakers favor.
- tabtab 8y ago
  I would like to see a more objective scoring. Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles and sometimes have bad defensive nights. Nor is a single bad call evidence of bias, such as the nosebleed incident. An example of a good evaluation would be several professional referees, not employed by the NBA, observe the videos of that game from different angles, and score the accuracy and fairness of each call and potential non-call, including which referee made the call and/or was closest. I don't wish to accuse people of conspiracies without strong and detailed evidence. And, too many teams habitually blame the refs for bad results to deflect their own shortcomings as a team. I've heard "wolf" far too many times. There is human error and thus randomness in referee calls. But as they say, luck favors the prepared. If you don't want bad calls deciding the game, then get good enough to have the margin of error in your favor.
  - Someone 8y ago
    ”Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles” Also, near the end of the game, I expect losing teams to commit more fouls, giving up free throws to prevent their opponent from using up the shot clock time. ”observe the videos of that game from different angles” Ideally, you would process the video so that you can’t see who the players are or which team the player is on. I fear that isn’t possible, though. Experts likely will recognize players from their length and the way they play.
    - tabtab 8y ago
      If the plays are dissected carefully, then the person involved shouldn't matter a whole lot. For example, a "flagrant foul" instead of a "common foul" may be a possibility if one does a "wind up" (pull back and then forward) of their arm(s) before a facial hit. If there's a disagreement about what constitutes a wind-up, then other wind-ups on other videos are analyzed and a mutual agreement hopefully appears about whether a specific case matches the agreed-upon working rule(s). Perhaps the actual calls from the other game videos are used as a reference, such as whether a mere hint of wind-up is enough to score as such, or if the pull-back has to be very clear. Since different refs may have diff interpretations, perhaps the ref's history should be used as a guide. After all, the key question is about whether a specific game or season is "fixed", not all games from a given ref. If a ref has say 3 years of requiring mostly clear wind-up motions, and they were consistent on this during the target game, it probably wouldn't be considered an oddity. Sure, that's a lot of digging and a lot of work, but if a play-off conspiracy has potential merit, it's worth it.
  - metabagel 8y ago
    You can be the judge. Here is the video. This wasn’t a close call. It was an egregiously wrong call. There was no way that ten out of ten impartial referees wouldn’t call this a foul on Kobe. https://youtu.be/mbWgWZjo1nI https://youtu.be/mbWgWZjo1nI
    - tabtab 8y ago
      Referees sometimes miss solid calls. No human can get 100% right when things happen in a fraction of a second. The Rams/Saints playoff game had a famous example (although there are conspiracy claims surrounding that also). I'll go with Hanlon's razor until something solid comes up.
- ErikAugust 8y ago
  2002*. But yeah, agree. 1993 and 2000 Western Conference Finals Game 7s as well.
- differentView 8y ago
  You misread the article. It was 2002 and wasn't the NBA Finals.
  - metabagel 8y ago
    Yeah, I didn’t read very carefully. I was just looking for any article on the game. I didn’t recall it being in the NBA Finals, but I let the wording of the article confuse me.
UweSchmidt 8y ago
I would propose doing away with refs entirely, like in Ultimate Frisbee. This would entail pretty radical changes to professional sports, but why not. At the highest level of play (and pay), contestants should be able to fiercely compete under principles of fairness and cooperation instead of establishing the current culture of flopping, doping and "off the field issues".
- gowld 8y ago
  You can't do that when there are $billions on the table. What happens when someone cheats?
  - ken 8y ago
    You'd need to find some way to allocate that money other than "to the winners". And/or, you'd need to disqualify or otherwise punish cheaters so strictly that players aren't tempted to do so. Then again, I confess I really don't understand pro sports.
- ehavener 8y ago
  So I'm up by 1 with 20 seconds to go in game 7 of the finals and I foul you. You really think I'm gonna hand over my championship out of fairness? This would turn every professional sport into the UFC.
  - Godel_unicode 8y ago
    There are refs in UFC.
- mruts 8y ago
  Are you serious? This isn’t how incentives work. The more money is on the line, the more you need refs. This is true regardless of who’s playing or the culture of the sport. The only reason ultimate frisbee doesn’t have refs is because no one really cares about it.
porpoisely 8y ago
Yep. I think the most egregious example is in the NFL where you can call a hold ( on offense or defense ) on every play if you wanted to. Of course in baseball, the umpire can "manage" the game by changing their strike zone. I still don't understand why we need umpires to call balls and strikes. Can't they get video imaging system to make the call? This way we know it is objective.
- PakG1 8y ago
  It's slowly happening. Look at how tennis can have challenges now. But I think a limited number of challenges per match? But I think people like having the human element a bit, and the accompanying controversy. Entire industries are built on discussing this stuff.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  You're assuming that the goal is to be objective. That's not always the case, and even when it is there are often overriding objectives. Two examples are Mike Wilbon complaining that they should "let the players play in the fourth quarter", and Jon Gruden wanting to get rid of video entirely. Jon wants it to be a human game played and officiated by humans, with all the error that entails. See also limits on coaches challenges to keep the game from being bogged down.
lobster45 8y ago
Back in 2002 I worked in IT for a California sports management firm. They had several NBA players as clients as well as NFL and MLB. One of the guys that worked there told me that the NBA was fixed. Everything included the lottery. Their goal was to get the high market teams to be in the Finals for TV ratings. Refs that were calling games to make this happen. Not sure if this was his opinion or fact, but it seems likely based on stories like this
- masonic 8y ago
  Everything included the lottery. The 1993 lottery seemed pretty blatant. Dallas #1, Golden State#2, ... Oops! Machine jammed on #6(?). Result? Do the entire thing over from the start in a back room with no cameras. Surprise! Magic get #1 the second year in a row despite having the lowest chance and Dallas drops to #4.
everdev 8y ago
> Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4 They know which games he bet on and which games he officiated, so they can track his calls in games where he had a vested interest in affecting the outcome. > The odds that Tim Donaghy would have randomly made calls that produced that imbalance are 6,155-to-1. Basically, there's no way an unbiased ref could generate such an accurate prediction of the winner.
- mruts 8y ago
  Those odds aren’t really that bad. Many poker hands have worse odds but no one is particularly amazed when they get them. That being said, it does seem a little sketchy.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    how many millions of poker hands have been played though? now how many thousands of basketball games?
mnm1 8y ago
This is why I mostly stopped watching the NBA and basketball in general. The foul-calling situation is ridiculous. Many offensive fouls get called as defensive fouls and even good calls slow down the game significantly, more than it's already slowed by the million timeouts in the game. A simple solution would be to lower the amount of fouls a player is allowed to commit before they are sent off like the card system in soccer. Or put players in a penalty box like in hockey for a few mins after every foul and make the team play one down. Or just simply call offensive fouls when the offensive player obviously just runs into the defensive player instead of the other way around. There are many possibilities, but I don't see the NBA exploring any of them and they are no stranger to rule changes. Maybe the NBA wants the games fixed, who knows? Regardless, they have the power to fix this and do not. Hard to argue they are acting in good conscience.
- tabtab 8y ago
  So there would be a stretch where it were 4 versus 5 players? Oh my! The idea of minimizing free-throws seems worth exploring, though. Maybe store them up so they are all done at the end of a quarter. One can then go get a sandwich if they don't want to watch that.

metabagel 8y ago

Game 3 of the NBA Finals in 2008 was pretty darn obvious. Anyone who watched that game had to have known that the game was fixed. http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3436401 http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3436401 “The Lakers attempted 40 free throws to the Kings' 25 in that game, and Los Angeles made 21 of 27 from the line while Sacramento converted 7 of 9 in the fourth quarter alone. In addition, a foul was called against Mike Bibby of the Kings after he was shoved and elbowed by Kobe Bryant, denying the Kings an opportunity to try for a tying basket. Also in that game, Kings centers Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard fouled out, and Kings coach Rick Adelman was highly critical of the officiating afterward.” It’s actually worse than that. Bryant drove into Bibby, committing an obvious offensive foul with an elbow to the nose which gave Bibby a nosebleed. Bibby was called for a personal foul for his nose fouling Kobe in the elbow.

paultannenbaum 8y ago
I think you mean 2002 not 2008. And yeah that game sure did seem skewed in the lakers favor.
tabtab 8y ago
I would like to see a more objective scoring. Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles and sometimes have bad defensive nights. Nor is a single bad call evidence of bias, such as the nosebleed incident. An example of a good evaluation would be several professional referees, not employed by the NBA, observe the videos of that game from different angles, and score the accuracy and fairness of each call and potential non-call, including which referee made the call and/or was closest. I don't wish to accuse people of conspiracies without strong and detailed evidence. And, too many teams habitually blame the refs for bad results to deflect their own shortcomings as a team. I've heard "wolf" far too many times. There is human error and thus randomness in referee calls. But as they say, luck favors the prepared. If you don't want bad calls deciding the game, then get good enough to have the margin of error in your favor.
- Someone 8y ago
  ”Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles” Also, near the end of the game, I expect losing teams to commit more fouls, giving up free throws to prevent their opponent from using up the shot clock time. ”observe the videos of that game from different angles” Ideally, you would process the video so that you can’t see who the players are or which team the player is on. I fear that isn’t possible, though. Experts likely will recognize players from their length and the way they play.
  - tabtab 8y ago
    If the plays are dissected carefully, then the person involved shouldn't matter a whole lot. For example, a "flagrant foul" instead of a "common foul" may be a possibility if one does a "wind up" (pull back and then forward) of their arm(s) before a facial hit. If there's a disagreement about what constitutes a wind-up, then other wind-ups on other videos are analyzed and a mutual agreement hopefully appears about whether a specific case matches the agreed-upon working rule(s). Perhaps the actual calls from the other game videos are used as a reference, such as whether a mere hint of wind-up is enough to score as such, or if the pull-back has to be very clear. Since different refs may have diff interpretations, perhaps the ref's history should be used as a guide. After all, the key question is about whether a specific game or season is "fixed", not all games from a given ref. If a ref has say 3 years of requiring mostly clear wind-up motions, and they were consistent on this during the target game, it probably wouldn't be considered an oddity. Sure, that's a lot of digging and a lot of work, but if a play-off conspiracy has potential merit, it's worth it.
- metabagel 8y ago
  You can be the judge. Here is the video. This wasn’t a close call. It was an egregiously wrong call. There was no way that ten out of ten impartial referees wouldn’t call this a foul on Kobe. https://youtu.be/mbWgWZjo1nI https://youtu.be/mbWgWZjo1nI
  - tabtab 8y ago
    Referees sometimes miss solid calls. No human can get 100% right when things happen in a fraction of a second. The Rams/Saints playoff game had a famous example (although there are conspiracy claims surrounding that also). I'll go with Hanlon's razor until something solid comes up.
ErikAugust 8y ago
2002*. But yeah, agree. 1993 and 2000 Western Conference Finals Game 7s as well.
differentView 8y ago
You misread the article. It was 2002 and wasn't the NBA Finals.
- metabagel 8y ago
  Yeah, I didn’t read very carefully. I was just looking for any article on the game. I didn’t recall it being in the NBA Finals, but I let the wording of the article confuse me.

UweSchmidt 8y ago

I would propose doing away with refs entirely, like in Ultimate Frisbee. This would entail pretty radical changes to professional sports, but why not. At the highest level of play (and pay), contestants should be able to fiercely compete under principles of fairness and cooperation instead of establishing the current culture of flopping, doping and "off the field issues".

gowld 8y ago
You can't do that when there are $billions on the table. What happens when someone cheats?
- ken 8y ago
  You'd need to find some way to allocate that money other than "to the winners". And/or, you'd need to disqualify or otherwise punish cheaters so strictly that players aren't tempted to do so. Then again, I confess I really don't understand pro sports.
ehavener 8y ago
So I'm up by 1 with 20 seconds to go in game 7 of the finals and I foul you. You really think I'm gonna hand over my championship out of fairness? This would turn every professional sport into the UFC.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  There are refs in UFC.
mruts 8y ago
Are you serious? This isn’t how incentives work. The more money is on the line, the more you need refs. This is true regardless of who’s playing or the culture of the sport. The only reason ultimate frisbee doesn’t have refs is because no one really cares about it.

porpoisely 8y ago

Yep. I think the most egregious example is in the NFL where you can call a hold ( on offense or defense ) on every play if you wanted to. Of course in baseball, the umpire can "manage" the game by changing their strike zone. I still don't understand why we need umpires to call balls and strikes. Can't they get video imaging system to make the call? This way we know it is objective.

PakG1 8y ago
It's slowly happening. Look at how tennis can have challenges now. But I think a limited number of challenges per match? But I think people like having the human element a bit, and the accompanying controversy. Entire industries are built on discussing this stuff.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
You're assuming that the goal is to be objective. That's not always the case, and even when it is there are often overriding objectives. Two examples are Mike Wilbon complaining that they should "let the players play in the fourth quarter", and Jon Gruden wanting to get rid of video entirely. Jon wants it to be a human game played and officiated by humans, with all the error that entails. See also limits on coaches challenges to keep the game from being bogged down.

lobster45 8y ago

Back in 2002 I worked in IT for a California sports management firm. They had several NBA players as clients as well as NFL and MLB. One of the guys that worked there told me that the NBA was fixed. Everything included the lottery. Their goal was to get the high market teams to be in the Finals for TV ratings. Refs that were calling games to make this happen. Not sure if this was his opinion or fact, but it seems likely based on stories like this

masonic 8y ago
Everything included the lottery. The 1993 lottery seemed pretty blatant. Dallas #1, Golden State#2, ... Oops! Machine jammed on #6(?). Result? Do the entire thing over from the start in a back room with no cameras. Surprise! Magic get #1 the second year in a row despite having the lowest chance and Dallas drops to #4.

everdev 8y ago

> Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4 They know which games he bet on and which games he officiated, so they can track his calls in games where he had a vested interest in affecting the outcome. > The odds that Tim Donaghy would have randomly made calls that produced that imbalance are 6,155-to-1. Basically, there's no way an unbiased ref could generate such an accurate prediction of the winner.

mruts 8y ago
Those odds aren’t really that bad. Many poker hands have worse odds but no one is particularly amazed when they get them. That being said, it does seem a little sketchy.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  how many millions of poker hands have been played though? now how many thousands of basketball games?

mnm1 8y ago

This is why I mostly stopped watching the NBA and basketball in general. The foul-calling situation is ridiculous. Many offensive fouls get called as defensive fouls and even good calls slow down the game significantly, more than it's already slowed by the million timeouts in the game. A simple solution would be to lower the amount of fouls a player is allowed to commit before they are sent off like the card system in soccer. Or put players in a penalty box like in hockey for a few mins after every foul and make the team play one down. Or just simply call offensive fouls when the offensive player obviously just runs into the defensive player instead of the other way around. There are many possibilities, but I don't see the NBA exploring any of them and they are no stranger to rule changes. Maybe the NBA wants the games fixed, who knows? Regardless, they have the power to fix this and do not. Hard to argue they are acting in good conscience.

tabtab 8y ago
So there would be a stretch where it were 4 versus 5 players? Oh my! The idea of minimizing free-throws seems worth exploring, though. Maybe store them up so they are all done at the end of a quarter. One can then go get a sandwich if they don't want to watch that.