Investigation into Officiating Extending Series

by BearsNecessity on Jun 23, 2008 5:48 PM PDT

Kevin Hassett is the director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign. Like a lot of economist-types, Hassett has been inspired lately to poke around the available facts and figures to see if there is any evidence that the NBA, and/or its referees, may have influenced the outcome playoff games as former referee Tim Donaghy has alleged.

Hassett found no smoking gun.

But he did find some weird stuff in elimination games, when calls seemed to favor extending the series more than in other games.

He also found that home court advantage was much more important in the playoffs than in the regular season, which is a bit odd.

Both findings are consistent with what you'd find if you wanted to have as many money-making playoff games as possible. Basically, if every series ended in a sweep, there'd by very little opportunity to make money. However, if every series gets to Game 7 -- which happens when home teams win every game -- the teams and the League have not only three more chances to make money, but the three most exciting games of the series.

...

First let's look at Game 5. In the 2007 and 2008 playoffs, 25 series extended to at least five games. At times when the home team was leading three games to one, and another win meant the end of the series, the visiting team shot 1.1 percentage points better than the home team. When a home-team win doesn't end the series, the home team's field-goal percentage is 5.4 points higher on average than the away team's.

Let's turn to Game 6: In the 2007 and 2008 playoffs, in games where the home team was behind in the series, it was called for 4.1 fewer fouls on average than the away team.

In the seventh game the foul differential drops to just one during the past two years. That's little more than the regular season average.

Any thoughts on these findings and how they relate to the Lakers-Kings series? And do you guys think the NBA assigns officials to influence the outcomes of certain games?

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