DOES THE NBA FIX PLAYOFF SERIES BASED ON TV MARKETS?

[SCassell19]

While doing my research of playoff games for each ref, I wanted to know if there was any kind of bias favoring teams with a large TV market vs teams with a small TV market. You can say yes there is, look at the Knicks in the late 90's.....or the Lakers in the early 2000's....or Bos-LAL this year. But then you can say no they dont favor the good TV markets....look at the Spurs all those years....and the Jazz in the 90s. But the Spurs and Jazz were good those years. So I thought the fairest way to look at this is what happens when theres an upset? What happens when the higher seed team beats a lower seed team in the playoffs? How often is the team pulling the upset a small market team vs a large market team? Should be close to 50-50 right?

So I looked up the current TV markets. The link I used is: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/faculty/ ... lution.pdf

I looked at all the series back to 1995. Granted some of the TV markes could have changed a little going back that far, but probably not much. NY, PHL LA, CHI have always been large markets and Mil, Sac, Uta, Ind have always been small.

Since 1995 there have been 50 times where there was a upset based on the seeding. I did not count games in the Finals because theres too many times where a 2 seed in one conference is better than a 1 seed in the other. So just looked at the first 3 rounds. Exactly 50 upsets.

The team pulling the upset had a larger TV market 37 of the 50 times. So over the last 14 years when theres an upset in the first 3 rounds of the playoffs the team pulling the upset has a higher TV market a shocking 74% of the time.

There were 11 times when a top 10 TV market team upset a Bot 10 TV market team. There was only 1 time a bottom 10 team upset a top 10 team. That was in 2005 when the 6 seed Pacers beat the 3 seed Celtics. Ind has the #25 TV market and Bos has the #10.

To be fair.....this trend is evening out over the last few years. Since 2004 there have been 17 upsets. The team pulling the upset had the higher TV market 9 of the 17 times...just 53%. But from 2003-1995 the team pulling the upset had the higher TV market 28 out of 33 times. 85%...over a 9 year stretch. Thats sickning. I think this a question Stern needs to be asked.

"Uhhh Mr. Stern, weve noticed that from 1995-2003 there were 33 upsets in the playoffs. The team pulling the upset had a larger TV market in 85% of those upsets. How do you explain this? Happenstance? "

Id like to hear his answer to that.....

[europa]

SCassell, I have no idea what all of the info you've compiled means ultimately. It might not mean anything more than a whole bunch of really curious coincidences. But this is great great great stuff to read. You should honestly think about compiling this information for a book. I am 100% serious. I'll let others be the judge of whether my idea has merit but if enough people do and you're interested you and I should talk.

[bigkurty]

I agree with Europa and you should expand on this, get some help from say a co writer who wrote a statistical analysis book on another sport like baseball or something and write a book and I totally buy the conspiracy at this point. Just like why in that last thread of yours I did a quick analysis of average TV market versus FTA for last season and the larger TV markets did get more FTA on average. Now of course that was only over the course of one year but if I had time, I would like to see if that trend holds true over say the last decade.

[paulpressey25]

Agreed. You should sketch out about 4 or 5 chapters looking at all these things.

Large markets v. small markets.

The record of specific refs with each team.

The number of all-star players selected over the last 20-years from teams with major markets v. smaller markets.

[europa]

I even have the title.

But I'm not saying.

[fam3381]

I even have the title.

But I'm not saying.

Will there be a chapter on the wisdom of a Mo/Haslem trade?

[europa]

I even have the title.

But I'm not saying.

Will there be a chapter on the wisdom of a Mo/Haslem trade?

That'll be an insert in the book.

[SCassell19]

I wouldnt say no to the idea of a book. I could see maybe throwing something together in time for next years playoffs and release it then and see what kind of chatter it would cause. I dont know how many chapters there would have to be or what they would all be on, but I think you guys would agree that Dick Bavetta deserves his own chapter.

[MickeyDavis]

I even have the title.

But I'm not saying.

How about "Stern Screws Milwaukee"

[WEFFPIM]

A lot of information but not that much of a conclusion.

Develop some thoughts and ideas based on the stats you found and researched and you're in business.

[Neapolitan Buck]

Interesting data; we should also consider that teams in big market areas have big economical possibilities, so they can, for example, finish in luxury tax bound, a thing that is not in the possibilities of teams like Milwaukee; so they can offer more, are more interesting destinations for the best free agents and coaches...

It's probable that NBA has been helping the teams with the biggest market area, but they can also help themselves more than small market clubs can.

[Bernman]

Interesting data; we should also consider that teams in big market areas have big economical possibilities, so they can, for example, finish in luxury tax bound, a thing that is not in the possibilities of teams like Milwaukee; so they can offer more, are more interesting destinations for the best free agents and coaches...

It's probable that NBA has been helping the teams with the biggest market area, but they can also help themselves more than small market clubs can.

How does not being deterred by the luxury help big market teams during the season though? In the first place not being deterred by the luxury tax only basically gives those GM's free reign to employ their MLE option in the offseason and re-sign their own players for an exorbitant amount of money. Neither of which occurs during the season when teams are earning the seeds that SamCassell alluded to. This is not major league baseball where you can trade prospects playing for pennies in exchange for a rich, marquee player at the trade deadline. In the NBA of course you have to exchange contracts evenly, so the playing field is level from a financial standpoint during the season. There's little leading to a high market team being better at the end of the season than at the beginning. So Milwaukee as a #2 or 7 should have the same meaning as New York at those identical seeds. Cassell's logic was perfectly sound yet again and research very telling.

[smauss]

Very interesting data. I'm on board; do the book!

[SCassell19]

I set a criteria to pick out the games in the playoffs where it looks like the fix might be on. The criteria I set is as follows:

A. The team that wins the game must also win the series.

B. It must be a must-win game for the team that wins. I defined a must win game as a game 7 (or game 5 1st round series back in the day) or when they are behind in the series coming into the game.

C. They must shoot 10+ more free throws than the opponent.

D. The FT differential must be greater than or equal to the point differential in the game. So if a team wins by 30 and shoots 10 more free throws you cant really call that a fix. But if they shoot 15 more free throws and win by 4 then thats a questionable game. So basically, I wanted only close games.

I think the criteria does a good job of picking out some really questionable games without any subjective factors. I wanted only "must win" games because I think thats when the fix really becomes obvious. For example, if they want Team A to beat Team B and its game 1 of the series and Team B plays great they might just let them win that game....theres always the rest of the series. But if its a game 7 or if Team A is down in the series then they cant just "let Team B win". They must pull out all the stops to get Team A the win. The fact that they shoot 10+ more fts and is a pretty close game shows that they might be "pulling out all the stops".

So there were 21 games that fit this criteria (since 1998). I think its very interesting to note that of the 21 games that fit the criteria, 17 were in favor of the higher TV market. So the fix "appeared" to be on in 21 games...almost all of which favored the higher TV market team.

I kept track of how many times each ref was involved in the games. Here are the top participants:

DICK BAVETTA - 9
JOE CRAWFORD - 6
BENNETT SALVATORE - 5
ED F RUSH - 5
DAN CRAWFORD - 4
STEVE JAVIE - 3
DERRICK STAFFORD - 3
TED BERNHARDT - 3
SCOTT FOSTER - 3
JIM CLARK - 3
TOM WASHINGTON - 3

So Dick Bavetta just happens to ref in 43% of these games. Also, no team "benefited" from one of these games more than once in a single playoff season. No team, that is, except the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers. They benefited THREE times. In the 2nd round they were down 1-0 against Toronto. In game 2 they won 97-92 but outshot TOR 26-13 at the line (refs: J Crawford, D Vaden, D Stafford). In game 7 of that series they won 88-87 and outshot TOR 32-17 at the line (refs: D Bavetta, Ed Rush, D Crawford). And of course they were down 2-1 going into game 4 vs the Bucks. They won that game 89-83 and outshot the Bucks 22-11 (refs D Bavetta, T Bernhardt, D Crawford).

[bigkurty]

Man that Bavetta looks more and more like a dirty crook every time you dig deeper into the stats SCassell19. I am actually not surprised one bit that any of those top 4 refs are on your list though. Seriously you have some crazy info going on here.

[Jez2983]

Just a thought though, mate - don't give us all your info or no-one will buy your book!

Great work again though. I'd love to see if these stats have significance when compared/correlated - but I suppose that should be in the book!!!

[paulpressey25]

He doesn't need to do a book. He's just got to keep working these angles and come up with about the 3 best ones against Bavetta (like this recent big market games thing). Then put that info in a really concise tight format with an angle like "Is Dick Bavetta Stern's Paulie Walnuts?" I still maintain using the Soprano's hook will get more people's attention. Somehow make the data into a 400 word or less posting.

Then get Fam to do a story on his blog about it. That will get linked to TrueHoop and then get some traction. It is good stuff.

I still maintain Dick Bavetta quietly retires in the dead of August this year. Probably during the Olympics or the Democratic Convention when the public and news media are fixated on something else.

[LISTEN2JAZZ]

I don't think anyone should expect to see exactly 25 large market wins and 25 small market wins. These data don't jump out at me as being too suspicious.