Posted by BlueSeats:

I don't think the intention of the study needed to be explained to me simply because I acknowledged the possibility of bias and indicated how many other biases may also exist that have not been quantified. See I think you have a strong motivation in posting the article and might be trying too hard to justify it.

Where I think we differ in on orientation to the topic. In this one, even if the bias was squarely identified and counted, the significance of it is fairly low "up to 4.5%". It MAXES, at 4.5%, and that includes 13 years of data. With greater sensitivity on racial issues and more minority refs I wouldn't be surprised if the number is quite a bit lower in present times.

Also, depending on how well the data were culled, and how well designed the study was, percentages below 3 or 4% in such studies are often considered "statistically insignificant". For instance you often see poll data showing the findings are accurate to +/- (lets say) 4%. This means any findings of 4% or below can be thrown out because they might simply be the result of error in the approach. Someone better at statistical analysis can go into this better than I.

But we're not talking about a large bias here. It's not like 20% of the calls should be race adjusted, whatever the amount is probably borders on being statistically irrelevant (IOW, inside that noise area of the study) and as I pointed out, some calls (other than fouls) might even favor blacks, or black all-stars.

I forget if it was you or misterearl who posted it, but after Imus was fired someone posted an article that showed that something like 55% of whites thought the punishment was fair, while 60% of blacks thought it was. I think that's reasonably close, but I felt as if (perhaps mistakenly so) as if the data were shown to establish a great divide.

I guess I just think we're past "baby steps" on racial issues. I know there are still a lot of racists out there, my ears are not virgin, just as there are misogynists, homophobes, anti-semites, and muslim haters. But what does it say when these topics are posted on message boards for discussion, and the act of discussion itself is used as further evidence of that certain something that led one to post the article in the first place?

It's pretty tough for a white person to talk about black issues. For instance, if I don't like hip-hop or black comedians it's because I'm a square outsider who'll never "get it". Fine, but if I do like it it's because I take pleasure in the negative imagery that's pushed on me by the self-serving white establishment. It's a no win proposition.

No one doubts there are subtle biases at play. No one doubts it includes whites, blacks, asians, latinos, men, women, straights, gays, jews, muslims, christians, liberals, conservatives, young, old, etc. But if we're gonna keep posting these articles like pointed fingers, can we at least discuss them?

I guess the short of it for me is that I perceive some of these race oriented articles as trying to show how far apart we are (culturally, not you and me) but largely they show how close we've truly become. Don't mis-perceive that as me wanting anything less than full equality. But in as much as you're not comfortable with people diminishing the results of findings like these, so shouldn't they be exaggerated. Until this study has been critiqued by those in a position to do so, none of us know how accurate or relevant the numbers are. I'd like to think that if a peer reviewed study showed a really large bias we'd all be outraged, but that's not what we're seeing here. The article itself cites black coaches, players and GMs cited in the report who don't feel biased against. Don't blame me for that. ;-)

[Edited by - blueseats on 05-02-2007 3:00 PM]

take it easy,
1) my comments werent directed at you. I know from previous conversation that you have a sophisticated and nuanced perspective on race relations even when we disagree.
2) I have a degree in sociology, explaining statistics of social research to me is like-well, very unecesasary.
3)I dont have any motivation in posting it, other than the dialogue that comes as a result of it. This study is nearly insignificant substantiated or not. Fouls in the NBA are not real things, basketball is not real life, and basketball players are not real people (they aren't working class people). this is water cooler conversation which could lead to the discussion of some real issues, but this in and of itself is not a real issue.
4) Yeah, I know, White people have it pretty tough in this country. They can't even talk about black comedy! ROFL!! I think thats a false dichotomy. Like Black comedy or don't like it, who cares? By and Large I dont like black comedy or most of the hip hop music that is made today. What box does that put me in?
5)How does one post an article like a pointed finger? I didn't say this has to be true or it definitely is? Others however did attempt to discredit it on any number of fronts. Did you notice that? Andrew did and beat me to the punch.

Blue, I am a student of reality. Reality is, that to be black in this country is to be at the bottom of the racial spectrum, to be thought of less than, to be prejudged in mainly negative ways, and to be viewed by the actions of the worst of your group. Discrimination in areas like housing, employment, and the justice system are realities for black people. Discrimination in a host of other real life, and real world situations is also a reality. I'm not crying or complaining, I am just stating what I know to be a documented fact of life for black people. If I weren't familiar with the statistics, I certainly have lived long enough to have some experience with it myself, but I am familiar with the data, and it strongly supports what I am saying. This study may show that in this completely meaningless area of life (fouls in a game) the trends of discrimination continue. It certainly seems logical to me, and it is certainly consistant with reality, though it still may not ring true. But this study is nothing more than conversation to me, I'm not hanging my hat on this like it means something to me because it unequivocally does not.

[Edited by - Killa4luv on 05-02-2007 3:27 PM]

This is an atrocious model in which to study subconscious racial biases for many reasons. Literally countless confounding factors. At the very least, they would need to conduct an empirical confirmation on a subset of the data.

The study seems a lil ridiculous considering that at least 90% of NBA players are Black and about 90% of the refs are white. It just hard to make an objective study into racial bias without discounting that.

Posted by Killa4luv:

take it easy,
1) my comments werent directed at you. I know from previous conversation that you have a sophisticated and nuanced perspective on race relations even when we disagree.
2) I have a degree in sociology, explaining statistics of social research to me is like-well, very unecesasary.
3)I dont have any motivation in posting it, other than the dialogue that comes as a result of it. This study is nearly insignificant substantiated or not. Fouls in the NBA are not real things, basketball is not real life, and basketball players are not real people (they aren't working class people). this is water cooler conversation which could lead to the discussion of some real issues, but this in and of itself is not a real issue.
4) Yeah, I know, White people have it pretty tough in this country. They can't even talk about black comedy! ROFL!! I think thats a false dichotomy. Like Black comedy or don't like it, who cares? By and Large I dont like black comedy or most of the hip hop music that is made today. What box does that put me in?
5)How does one post an article like a pointed finger? I didn't say this has to be true or it definitely is? Others however did attempt to discredit it on any number of fronts. Did you notice that? Andrew did and beat me to the punch.

Blue, I am a student of reality. Reality is, that to be black in this country is to be at the bottom of the racial spectrum, to be thought of less than, to be prejudged in mainly negative ways, and to be viewed by the actions of the worst of your group. Discrimination in areas like housing, employment, and the justice system are realities for black people. Discrimination in a host of other real life, and real world situations is also a reality. I'm not crying or complaining, I am just stating what I know to be a documented fact of life for black people. If I weren't familiar with the statistics, I certainly have lived long enough to have some experience with it myself, but I am familiar with the data, and it strongly supports what I am saying. This study may show that in this completely meaningless area of life (fouls in a game) the trends of discrimination continue. It certainly seems logical to me, and it is certainly consistant with reality, though it still may not ring true. But this study is nothing more than conversation to me, I'm not hanging my hat on this like it means something to me because it unequivocally does not.

[Edited by - Killa4luv on 05-02-2007 3:27 PM]

Killa, good post, and masterplan, yours above it was good too.

Killa, I get you. I think the problem for me is that on this board we largely don't talk about the real issues you speak to in the last paragraph, and if we did we'd probably be more in agreement. Instead we get involved in these fringe issues that, as you suggest, are representative of, but largely live outside of reality. We talk about Imus and basketball, which are entertainment, and the injustices involved are far less concrete or provable (like was Imus being sincere in his vulgarities or doing a shock-jock routine).

I do think they are raised as evidence of the hard realities, but they of themselves do not fall within those confines. Being the sucker for nuance that I am, when I dredge through the specifics of these fringe cases I end up feeling like people think I'm doing so to discount the big hardships too. I'm not.

So what I'm suggesting is if discriminating in housing and jobs etc is taking place (as I'm sure it is), and that is the kind of stuff we should be looking at, why not post those articles and be dealing with what we should be dealing with instead of splashing around in shallow water?

Closer look at ref study
John Hollinger
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The basketball world is buzzing today over an academic study on racial discrimination by NBA referees, which states that the racial composition of a three-man officiating crew can have an impact on a game's outcome.

In particular, the study states that the difference between how white referees treat black players and how they treat white players is "large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew."

Predictably, the NBA has launched a PR offensive defending its officials' work and saying its own study, which looked at individual refs who made a call rather than the results of a three-man crew, showed no bias by the officials.

But the bigger point that everyone is missing is that, in fact, the academic study showed remarkably little bias as well. Maybe I'm a cynic here, but I had expected there would be some level of bias by both black and white officials -- refs are human too, after all, and when they step on the court they unwittingly bring their life experiences and values with them.

Yet the effect is almost totally insignificant. The study reports that a black player will rack up approximately 0.16 added fouls per 48 minutes with an all-white officiating crew, as compared to an all-black one.

In other words, if he plays 3,190 minutes in a season -- the league-leading total posted by LeBron James this year -- he would pick up 11 extra fouls. Eleven.

Even that scenario depends on the difference between all-black and all-white crews, which isn't realistic -- in reality most games will be officiated by a mixed crew (32 percent of the league's officials are black), so the effect will be much smaller. Thus, the difference between a black player and white player of similar skills and abilities might be something like six or seven fouls all season, out of the 200 or more that most players accumulate in a season. That's if you lead the league in minutes, mind you -- it would be much less for anyone else.

So when the authors talk about a noticeable impact on results, I guess it depends on what they mean by "noticeable." The authors chose to play up the fact that a bias was found, but to me it's even more of a story that it was found to be so small.

That said, I'm sure the league is unhappy about the study and the implications, and obviously we'd like to see the difference become zero. But let's not lose sight of the microscopic impact we're talking about. Thus, don't expect Gregg Popovich to walk on the court tonight, see three white refs and decide Beno Udrih and Matt Bonner will get the bulk of the minutes.

While we're talking about this study, one other item in it drew my attention: the finding that during the 13-year study period, teams with the greater share of playing time by black players won 48.6 percent of games. The authors seemed to imply some kind of mild institutional racism against black players by this result.

In fact, there's a much more obvious explanation -- the league imported a bunch of talent from Europe during the study period, almost all of it white, and the poorly run teams were the last ones to figure out there were good players on other continents. Thus, by default they ended up with more black players on their rosters.

Look back on the drafts of the mid-to-late '90s and you'll see what I mean. Players like Peja Stojakovic, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki and Andrei Kirilenko were all basically stolen in the draft by smart, forward-thinking teams. That their teams won more games than average is an effect of their superior front offices, not the officiating.

Finally, let's get to the really juicy stuff -- I was a little disappointed the study didn't look at technical fouls and ejections. If there were a pattern of bias, wouldn't we expect it to come out most often when emotions already were running high? Based on some recent high-profile events involving white referees and black players (Crawford vs. Duncan, Salvatore vs. Davis, etc.) I can't be the only one who wishes this had been part of the study.

Posted by 4949:

I don't want to get into any stickiness about this, but is it fair to say that maybe the calls 'way outnumber' some other calls simply because the majority of players happen to be black? In simple math, if you have two white guys who get lets say 3 calls against them, equaling 6. And then lets say you have three black guys who also get about 3 calls against them, I mean the total adds up to 9.

So 9 to 6? Is this what this article is getting at? It's a fair observation. I know some teams have a good amount of different kinds of people on they're teams, but most teams do not. Take our Knicks for instance. We have what' one white guy ourselves? I don't think Lee has a chance of out fouling the entire team here.

That's not what the study is reporting.

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by Killa4luv:

take it easy,
1) my comments werent directed at you. I know from previous conversation that you have a sophisticated and nuanced perspective on race relations even when we disagree.
2) I have a degree in sociology, explaining statistics of social research to me is like-well, very unecesasary.
3)I dont have any motivation in posting it, other than the dialogue that comes as a result of it. This study is nearly insignificant substantiated or not. Fouls in the NBA are not real things, basketball is not real life, and basketball players are not real people (they aren't working class people). this is water cooler conversation which could lead to the discussion of some real issues, but this in and of itself is not a real issue.
4) Yeah, I know, White people have it pretty tough in this country. They can't even talk about black comedy! ROFL!! I think thats a false dichotomy. Like Black comedy or don't like it, who cares? By and Large I dont like black comedy or most of the hip hop music that is made today. What box does that put me in?
5)How does one post an article like a pointed finger? I didn't say this has to be true or it definitely is? Others however did attempt to discredit it on any number of fronts. Did you notice that? Andrew did and beat me to the punch.

Blue, I am a student of reality. Reality is, that to be black in this country is to be at the bottom of the racial spectrum, to be thought of less than, to be prejudged in mainly negative ways, and to be viewed by the actions of the worst of your group. Discrimination in areas like housing, employment, and the justice system are realities for black people. Discrimination in a host of other real life, and real world situations is also a reality. I'm not crying or complaining, I am just stating what I know to be a documented fact of life for black people. If I weren't familiar with the statistics, I certainly have lived long enough to have some experience with it myself, but I am familiar with the data, and it strongly supports what I am saying. This study may show that in this completely meaningless area of life (fouls in a game) the trends of discrimination continue. It certainly seems logical to me, and it is certainly consistant with reality, though it still may not ring true. But this study is nothing more than conversation to me, I'm not hanging my hat on this like it means something to me because it unequivocally does not.

[Edited by - Killa4luv on 05-02-2007 3:27 PM]

Killa, good post, and masterplan, yours above it was good too.

Killa, I get you. I think the problem for me is that on this board we largely don't talk about the real issues you speak to in the last paragraph, and if we did we'd probably be more in agreement. Instead we get involved in these fringe issues that, as you suggest, are representative of, but largely live outside of reality. We talk about Imus and basketball, which are entertainment, and the injustices involved are far less concrete or provable (like was Imus being sincere in his vulgarities or doing a shock-jock routine).

I do think they are raised as evidence of the hard realities, but they of themselves do not fall within those confines. Being the sucker for nuance that I am, when I dredge through the specifics of these fringe cases I end up feeling like people think I'm doing so to discount the big hardships too. I'm not.

So what I'm suggesting is if discriminating in housing and jobs etc is taking place (as I'm sure it is), and that is the kind of stuff we should be looking at, why not post those articles and be dealing with what we should be dealing with instead of splashing around in shallow water?

well this article was on the front page of the NYT website while I was on there at 1:30 in the morning. ITs a racial issue and its related to bball so I knew people would discuss it. There aren't many similar studies of real world situations that make it to the front page of the times, and if they did, I wonder whether it would be discussed here as vigorously.

Posted by Bippity10:

The best players in the game tend to be black. The guys that get to the line tend to be the best players. The guys defending the best players tend to be black. Just another thought.

Like Steve Nash as the best players, and Andres Nocioni and Dan Majerle for best defensive players? It's not even about that. Point taken though. It's a very much so dominantly black sport and it's easy to see that. It's a silly study.

Posted by Allanfan20:

Posted by Bippity10:

The best players in the game tend to be black. The guys that get to the line tend to be the best players. The guys defending the best players tend to be black. Just another thought.

Like Steve Nash as the best players, and Andres Nocioni and Dan Majerle for best defensive players? It's not even about that. Point taken though. It's a very much so dominantly black sport and it's easy to see that. It's a silly study.

statistically, the way you compensate for the differences between individual players is by taking an enormously large sample size. these guys apparently analyzed box scores from every game for 13 seasons... i really have no idea how many data points that comes out to - in the ten thousands at least. then dividing that data up based solely on the racial composition of refereeing crews and running statistical tests...

give these guys a little more credit. a rule of statistics is that correlation does not mean causality, i.e. numbers can illustrate but not prove. so it's entirely plausible they overstepped the bounds of what their data actually tells (if it was for publicity, then shame on them). or that the NYT took more innocuous conclusions and ran with them. but i'd expect/hope that the study was designed to avoid the kinds of error you're bringing up.