A Few Thoughts on Mavs 118, Heat 122

[ItsGoTime]

breakdowns of what calls they tend to make/miss, home/away splits, and per-team breakdowns.

I myself would love to see ref stats, but isn't that a slippery slope? We see players doing things to make their stats look better, wouldn't that be the case with refs as well? Also, I know every ref has their main area on the court that they are in charge of calling and can call anything on the court. Does a missed call go on the guy closest to the foul? The guy that has the clearest vision of the foul? All 3 refs? Does a correct call go to all 3 as well? Lots of things could skew what makes a good/bad ref, and those grey areas are what lots of people use to deflect and muddy the water.

[mavsluvr]

I agree with both that transparency can help fix mistakes, but I don't think the L2MR really offers transparency.

What the NBA (really all professional sports leagues) need, IMO, is an evaluation process of their individual officials that is in open view of the fans. 

It should include accuracy of calls and non-calls across all 48 minutes + OT, breakdowns of what calls they tend to make/miss, home/away splits, and per-team breakdowns. Most important is fans should know what penalties there are for poor performances, and what incentives they receive for good performances.

Yeah, good stuff. An idea I like is Cuban's old idea of outsourcing officiating to a third party.

Can't say I've thought about that. What is the perceived advantage? (Not disagreeing, just interested in the info.)

[fifteenth]

Can't say I've thought about that. What is the perceived advantage? (Not disagreeing, just interested in the info.)

Don't have time to look for Cuban's quotes, but my opinion on the matter is that it removes officiating from NBA politics and gives it to a company/entity tasked with one responsibility: to produce competent and impartial officiating. The NBA can register their overall approval or disapproval with the officiating product in their relationship with the contractor, and even change officiating company if things aren't working out, but it removes the confusing team owner / league front office / officiating relationship triangle.

[DrMav]

I myself would love to see ref stats, but isn't that a slippery slope? We see players doing things to make their stats look better, wouldn't that be the case with refs as well? Also, I know every ref has their main area on the court that they are in charge of calling and can call anything on the court. Does a missed call go on the guy closest to the foul? The guy that has the clearest vision of the foul? All 3 refs? Does a correct call go to all 3 as well? Lots of things could skew what makes a good/bad ref, and those grey areas are what lots of people use to deflect and muddy the water.

Since the barometer would be whether a correct call is made though, shouldn't we want a ref to do anything they could do in that circumstance to make their stats look better? For example: if a certain ref is one that tends to get caught up in the emotion of the home crowd, routinely calling games that favor the home team and stats bring that to light so he/she works to correct it, isn't that for the best?

Like you said, each ref has a part of the court that they are primarily responsible for on any given play, and they rotate positioning in very strategic manners. We have all sorts of advanced stats and you could break it down by primary, secondary, and tertiary responsibility on each call/no-call with weights on performance adjusted accordingly. 

AFAIK, while a lot of the referees work together on a lot of games, they don't have set crews like in football where they do every game together, and perhaps more closely monitored "advanced stats" for refs could help in putting together crews that function better together. 

No matter what you do it would be a big ordeal, but professional sports are a big money business so I think the legitimacy of outcomes is worth it. Surely some smart minds could come together and come up with something that works better than some guy like me spitballing on the internet.

[mavsluvr]

Can't say I've thought about that. What is the perceived advantage? (Not disagreeing, just interested in the info.)

Don't have time to look for Cuban's quotes, but my opinion on the matter is that it removes officiating from NBA politics and gives it to a company/entity tasked with one responsibility: to produce competent and impartial officiating. The NBA can register their overall approval or disapproval with the officiating product in their relationship with the contractor, and even change officiating company if things aren't working out, but it removes the confusing team owner / league front office / officiating relationship triangle.

Thanks!

---

No matter what you do it would be a big ordeal, but professional sports are a big money business so I think the legitimacy of outcomes is worth it. Surely some smart minds could come together and come up with something that works better than some guy like me spitballing on the internet.

To this end, is there a league that already does something like this? Even if it's another sport, or not in the USA. To study as a model.

[DrMav]

To this end, is there a league that already does something like this? Even if it's another sport, or not in the USA. To study as a model.

NBA, NFL, and MLB are all I have any familiarity with, and all claim to have grading systems, which is in part how they select their postseason officials. The problem still is none of us know what that grading system is. 

So as far as I know, no there's no system of grading that we can trust to actually be useful for promoting fair competitions or to even help officials improve their skills.

[ItsGoTime]

shouldn't we want a ref to do anything they could do in that circumstance to make their stats look better?

We should want the ref to make the right call, regardless of anything else. If you add in the stats as 1 more thing to consider, it can add to the possibility of making the wrong call. If it's close enough to be a 50/50 call, say a 60/40 split, something like the ball gets tipped by the defender, but grazes the hand of the offensive player before going out of bounds, usually that call is made against the defender and it would be the offensive team's ball because the balls trajectory continued in the direction the defender was swiping. However, the ref knows the ball slightly shifted when it went past the offensive player's hand. The call then has some judgement in play and would basically be called a 50/50 call that usually gives the ball to the offensive team. 

Does that ref call it the way he thinks it is, or the way he knows the call is made most of the time? Does his stats come into play with that decision? It's a split second decision, so all this gets processed really fast. This is what was in play in the last game where Powell hit the ball out of Anunoby's hand after the botched FT rebound. The refs have the ability to review the play in that instance, if it was during the course of the game, however, do they review it? What if they call it out on Powell and later it's determined that it barely grazed Anunoby's hand last? 

That becomes a stat against that ref but it's pretty tough to judge that particular play. If it goes against him that time, what happens the next time and so on, and so on. I wonder if stats like that are already kept on refs currently just not published. If they were published, I wonder what affect it would have on the judgement calls the refs make. That is the slippery slope I was referring to.