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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That being said, it does seem a little sketchy.
now how many thousands of basketball games?
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".
Then again, I confess I really don't understand pro sports.
This would turn every professional sport into the UFC.
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.
Everything included the lottery.
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.