John, the proffessor might have better stats than myself. I had to manually go through every game last year, and write down the three officials that reffed every game. I recorded them into wins and losses, and then tallied up my main suspects, or ones that showed up most often on either the win or losses lists. Many were on both, but I wrote down the ones that had the biggest differential.
However, what I really want to do is find refs that grew up in certain cities, and see how they ref games with which could be from their home town. I mean, if you grew up a Celtic fan all your life, and loved the NBA enough to become a ref in that league, should you not ref games involving your favorite team? Also should you then avoid reffing games where your favorite teams rivals play? These refs aren't saints.
For example, I would bet money that Violet is/was a Laker fan growing up in Compton. And in those years, most likely a Magic Johnson fan. Who is/was the Lakers biggest inner division rival? The Clips?
GS?
, nope it would be the Suns. So is it just a coincidence that we lose almost every game that she refs?
Honestly, I am just waiting for the day that some ex ref has a death bed confession that Stern rigs/has rigged the league to suit his wants and needs, and he has his refs do much of the dirty work. For example, if you notice, many of the Suns games has equal or close to equal fouls called, yet the other team may go to the line twice as much. As a ref, you can call away from the ball fouls on one team, but avoid going over the foul limit putting that team into a bonus situation. Also non calls, is what really hurts the Suns. Often consecutive non calls where the Suns are completely taken out of their rhythm. Then once the game is out of hand, they just call a few ticky tacky fouls to try and even out the number of calls.
Donaghy can't be the only ref that figured out these biases and used them to make money. There had to be a few other refs involved, at least on a minor scale. After Crawford came back from his suspension, did he call less fouls on Duncan? Was he allowed to ref their games?
Also, after Jon Barry pointed out through commentation that the Suns were getting shafted in calls during one of the Spurs series games, he didn't get to do many game commentation for a bit. And now, he rarely comments on any ref discrepencies. Coincidence?
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