Assessing late-game officiating favorability for every NBA team (Rohrbach)

[bisme37]

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles Lakers' overtime loss to the Boston Celtics this past weekend — ABC's most-watched Saturday prime-time regular season NBA game since 2019 — much of the discussion turned to a blown foul call on LeBron James' layup in the last seconds of regulation and his dramatic reaction to it.
...
In the last two-minute report of Saturday's game, the league identified two missed calls at the end of regulation — Tatum's foul and an offensive foul by Anthony Davis that would have negated Beverley's go-ahead basket 18 seconds earlier, giving the final possession to the Celtics (and nullifying James' layup).

In the aggregate, both teams benefited from missed calls, but the focus stayed on the final play, since we all get caught in the climactic moment, and the Lakers' feigned protest drew even greater attention to it.
...
It seemed weird to me that the league's highest-profile franchise and highest-profile player would flirt so closely with the idea that somehow the officials (and the NBA by extension) are conspiring against them.

So, I decided to review every last two-minute report for the Lakers this season, just to see if an assessment of every late call in their 19 close games supported or denied their claims. The NBA deemed its officials had missed a total of 34 calls or no-calls in those games, and 21 of them (or 61.8%) had favored the Lakers.

Here is a table of the number of close games for each team, the total amount of incorrect calls or no-calls in those games, the number of those calls that went in favor of each team, and the percentage of favorable calls that each team received:









https://sports.yahoo.com/sleepless-nights-index-assessing-late-game-officiating-favorability-for-every-nba-team-lakers-lebron-james-222212957.html

[The Explorer]

Everyone making a big deal about the Lakers including LeBron and his over the top reactions. But other teams have gotten screwed much worse over the course of the season. The Bulls already got screwed out of 3 victories. Other teams have as well. And if you compile these stats over multiple years, the results probably look even more favorable to LeBron's teams.

[infinite11285]

This is great info. Thanks for pulling it together. The %Favor and L2M data points provide some pretty good insight.

So the league really is conspiring against the Kings.

[Pelon chingon]

Tell me something I didn't know (Kings)

[KayDee35]

The real question is why are the Kings getting jobbed even when they're not playing the Lakers?

[Tor_Raps]

The real question is why are the Kings getting jobbed even when they're not playing the Lakers?

Tim Donough still has ref connections it seems lol

[celticfan42487]

The real question is why are the Kings getting jobbed even when they're not playing the Lakers?

Inertia.

They just can't stop screwing the Kings and helping the Lakers gets Ws they don't deserve every single game.

[infinite11285]

The need for so many L2M reports is sort of jarring. Unsurprisingly, winning franchises often draw the favorable whistle. Doesn't that factoid show evidence of an officiating problem in the NBA?

I'm curious to know why some teams were notated in black font and others in blue font.

[Flash Falcon X]

this is what makes the missed foul call on lebron's drive @ boston even worse. lakers have been favored on a lot of calls and refs still missed that jayson tatum foul when he clearly hacked lebron's arm 3 feet from the ref.

[infinite11285]

this is what makes the missed foul call on lebron's drive @ boston even worse. lakers have been favored on a lot of calls and refs still missed that jayson tatum foul when he clearly hacked lebron's arm 3 feet from the ref.

True, but I understand why some are upset. The NBA admitted to two missed calls that determined the outcome game; one in LA's favor and one in Boston's favor. On the surface, the missed call against Boston was more determinative than the other.

[Mavrelous]

It's been more than 20 years and Kings are still he punching bag of the NBA officials.

[levon]

The variance on this is too big to even be useful. It's like when they measure clutch stats using tiny samples. For instance, it could only take a few randomly favorably officiated games for the Kings to reach Lakers territory.

Further, it's not weighted by the actual magnitude of the play. I've been reading these L2M reports and whenever they mess up the most important call, they pad the other calls as favorable as if to reinforce the idea that nothing really changed by them missing the important, high-profile one. It reeks of bias and self preservation, which is to be expected for a team assessing its own performance.

I think we just need better officiating and the public L2M is useless.

[bisme37]

So people on twitter posted this (it was started by the twitter account LakeShowYo)...

Read on Twitter

And Eric Lewis got a ton of threats like this...
(Spoiler for naughty language)

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

Despite the fact that the original tweet isn't true...

Read on Twitter

Do better NBA fans!

[JimmyPlopper]

Kings at the bottom and all other Pacific division teams at the top. Hmm...

[Joshyjess]

From reading comments from teams after losses (never commenting, just reading), I've come to learn something very important - the NBA apparently has an agenda against every team in the league!!! Every loss proves that the NBA wants TEAM X to lose, and obviously wants TEAM Y (the team they just lost to) to win!
Charts and Stats like this mean nothing, because according to the NBA experts (realm GMers) they know better, and they know whats really happening!!!!

[infinite11285]

Spoiler:

So people on twitter posted this (it was started by the twitter account LakeShowYo)...

Read on Twitter

And Eric Lewis got a ton of threats like this...

Read on Twitter

Despite the fact that the original tweet isn't true...

Read on Twitter

Do better NBA fans!

That tweet was taken out of context. I posted this in a separate thread, but I'll paste it here, too, since it applies and could be a point to further the discussion:

49-28 is his overall record across all Celtics games he officiated. Standing alone, this type of information is almost worthless to show bias. We'd need to know which games he reffed (i.e. were the Celtics the favorites/underdogs) and how he individually reffed those games. But even without that information, a team winning a bunch of games in a row under a single ref seems to be somewhat common.

I'd like to know the home vs away split first; then, we can discuss any conspiracy.

[Lockdown504090]

too many useless numbers with no context are being used for stupid reasons in sports discourse by people who legitimately dont understand officiating.

I put this on the NBA for not doing a better job of educating fans, players and broadcast crews on the rules of the games they interacting with. an overwhelming majority of fans dont know that you can lift your pivot and step through, even more dont know what a travel is, or what legal contact is vs a foul.

[bisme37]

I'm honestly not intending to make an issue with Lakers fans. Bad calls sucks and I thought they probably should have won that game the other night just based on playing better for most of it than the C's did lol, let alone the refs.

But we got a thread the next day about how the Lakers would be in 4th place if not for the refs hating them and making so many bad calls against them. This shows that, if anything, they would actually be lower in the standings if all calls in the NBA were made correctly. Because (almost) every other team would have benefitted more from that scenario than they would.

So settle down Lakers friends lol. Every team deals with bad calls.

[levon]

I'm honestly not intending to make an issue with Lakers fans. Bad calls sucks and I thought they probably should have won that game the other night just based on playing better for most of it that the C's did lol, let alone the refs.

But we got a thread the next day about how the Lakers would be in 4th place if not for the refs hating them and making so many bad calls against them. This shows that, if anything, they would actually be lower in the standings if all calls in the NBA were made correctly. Because (almost) every other team would have benefitted more from that scenario than they would.

So settle down Lakers friends lol. Every team deals with bad calls.

This is going out of your way to be reductive, and every team deals with bad calls is just a truism. Find a team that's lost the opportunity to win 4 games in the last month in high-profile last second situations due to missed calls. Again, L2Ms are padded with equalizers, particularly in the "INC" category that would never have gotten a second look if it had happened outside of the L2M. Not all calls have the same consequences.

The end of the Philly game when Westbrook was going up against Embiid, he rose up and flailed. Looked like a typical spastic play in real time, no foul call. I wouldn't have called it. Upon review, Embiid's whole hand--palm and 5 fingers--are wrapped around Westbrook's arm and not letting go. The L2M report concluded that this is a correct no call as Embiid's contact was just incidental and he retracted his hand. Watching the video, there's no reality where Embiid even attempted to retract his hand. Westbrook just tried to draw the foul and didn't get it. It's not even subjective. I attribute the non-call in live action to the game being really fast. I understand missing that. But the L2M is clearly self-preservation, like anybody would do in a corporate environment when writing a postmortem for something that was their team's fault.

Ultimately, the solution for teams is to be so good that you aren't consistently in close game situations and leaving it in the hands of the refs. But to treat this tiny sample size as somehow representative of how many games were swung this season, or how LeBron's been officiated for a while now, is like trying to use just FG% to determine how good a player is.

[Rendei]

The statistician in me has all kinds of problems with this. But the results match the eye test so I dunno.