Road Teams are 16-5 in this years playoffs (Tonight's reffing crew)

[JETSET]

It looks like the NBA isn't wasting any time with helping their boy Lenojumpshot out.  Scott Foster will be the head ref tonight with Jason Phillips and Pat Fraher assisting him.

 

The record for home teams for each ref in this year's playoffs:

 

Foster 1-8

Phillips 3-4

Fraher 1-4

 

Foster shouldn't even be in the league after being a part of the Tim Donaghy scandal a few years ago.

[macdaddy]

Great.   In good news though i think i saw that lebron is 0-8 or something in game ones on the road.

[Guest]

Crap

[JETSET]

Scott Foster's gamelog:

http://vorped.com/1-nba/2014-2015/referee/31/scott-foster/

Soooo his only home win was on April 18th when the Bulls (a higher seed) won. It might be better to see that the higher seed record for Foster is 5-4. Is that so bad?

I must say it looks a lot better when seeing the actual games that he reffed.  Foster and Joey Crawford just seem to be the league's two head cronies and I was hoping we would be able to avoid them as much as possible.

[JETSET]

It's extremely rare that an official really is out to "get" your team (or the home team or whatever category in question). I think confirmation bias for refs is at play...you get to hear about "Joey Crawford just T-d up Duncan for no reason!!" and then you start looking for it. And if you're looking for instances where Joey Crawford makes awful calls then you'll find them. That works for most every ref.

Curious question for the board, but is there an NBA ref that you know by name and you go "hell yeah! that guy rocks!!" or something to that effect?

I can only speak for myself and as a bettor it has always been very useful to look at ref assignments.  My dislike for those two is not based on Joey's zaney actions on the court.  Although, he does try to be the star on the court way too often.  Trust me, people who have money on the Cavs were ecstatic to see today's ref assignment. 

[macdaddy]

The whole point is you should never know a refs name.   I mean how many NCAA refs do you know by name?   I know zero.   I don't believe in a bias toward a team but there is definitely a bias toward what the nba wants which is stars on the floor and drama.  Both of these are often times negated by calling the game properly which is why Lebron gets 15 fouls and why illegal screens aren't called in the last 2 minutes and why stars get to travel with the ball.   The guys who've been ref'ing for 20 years have that ingrained and i don't think they can be retrained to call a real basketball game.  They should be let go.

[Guest]

I wanna buy a Joey Crawford ref jersey, then proceed to burn it...

[DatWerkk]

The whole point is you should never know a refs name.   I mean how many NCAA refs do you know by name?   I know zero. 

 

I know Ted Valentine because he's sort of a college Joey Crawford, plus he seemed to have legitimate animosity towards Paul Hewitt back when he was coaching GT. Hate that guy.

[JETSET]

The whole point is you should never know a refs name.   I mean how many NCAA refs do you know by name?   I know zero.   I don't believe in a bias toward a team but there is definitely a bias toward what the nba wants which is stars on the floor and drama.  Both of these are often times negated by calling the game properly which is why Lebron gets 15 fouls and why illegal screens aren't called in the last 2 minutes and why stars get to travel with the ball.   The guys who've been ref'ing for 20 years have that ingrained and i don't think they can be retrained to call a real basketball game.  They should be let go.

Exactly.  and you also have the fact that Scott Foster was clearly working with Tim Donaghy when that whole scandal broke and he somehow still has a job in this league. 

[AHF]

you get to hear about "Joey Crawford just T-d up Duncan for no reason!!" 

 

In fairness, you didn't have to hear about it.  Everyone could see that one.  It was one of the most ridiculous calls by a ref in NBA history and deserved to get a lot of attention.  Clearly all about ego.

[JETSET]

Data are good. More data are better. So having information on the refs is helpful.

I don't know what the appropriate swing in the line should be by knowing Scott Foster is reffing the game, but if you're basing it off of his 9 games in the post-season so far then you're probably over-fitting your model and putting too much weight on recent performance. It appears that Scott Foster in the playoffs typically sees the home team score 1.3 less points per game and a 0.104 drop in their winning percentage (for 134 games). This particular post-season, those are 7 and 0.972 respectively but that's only 9 games. And if you look at his regular season numbers (1306 games), he's around 0.4 less and a 0.014 drop.

All of that to really say, yeah Scott Foster appears to favor the visiting team more but I get a sense that this shouldn't be more than a half a point swing in your internal line. Especially since those numbers I cited for the playoffs do not appear to have a nice way of correcting for the unbalanced scheduling of the playoffs (so I'd go with career numbers over playoff numbers).

No side for me tonight.  I'm sticking with the Hawks to score Over 98.5 and Korver to make Over 2.5 three pointers. 

 

I think Chicago made that Cleveland defense look much better than it actually is.  With a week of rest, Kyrie should see a lot of playing time and he is useless on the defensive end.  Teague, Dennis or Korver will take advantage when they are matched with him.  Kyrie, J.R. and even Lebron lose focus on defense, at times, and they can't get away with that vs us like they could vs the Bulls.

 

I think Korver's shot comes around since he won't have to work as hard on defense.  The Wizards were constantly running screens for Beal and Korver spent a ton of energy fighting through them.  He will be ready and able to capitalize on his open looks when they appear tonight.

[JETSET]

For that instance, sure. But if I were to ask you whether or not you think Joey Crawford makes more bad calls than most, would you agree? Which probably means that if he is making more bad calls, then he probably makes more calls in general. I guess there's a possibility that an individual might say that Joey Crawford *never* makes a good call, that all of his calls are bad, and that doesn't necessarily mean that he makes more/fewer calls.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/referees/crawfjo99r.html

I'm not sure which way people initially lean on how Joey Crawford is as an official, but it's fairly clear he makes fewer calls than the rest of the NBA. It seems to me to be far-fetched that all of his calls are bad. This sounds like a prime candidate for confirmation bias to creep in. People only recall Crawford's bad calls because they've heard about how bad he is so those are the instances that bring out the "I HATE JOEY CRAWFORD!!!"

Joey Crawford might actually be bad, but I think the perception of him is worse than the truth because his name gets thrown around so often and instinctively brings out the "oh no, not Joey Crawford!" from fans all around.

I think you are overthinking this.  I'm of the opinion that the league has certain interests when it comes to how they like series to play out.  Foster and Crawford are their two goons and they are usually suited up in important games because they know how to give the NBA what it wants.  Whether it's to just extend a series or to determine the winner of that series.  For instance, Game 6 of GSW/Memphis, the refs tried their damnedest to extend that series to 7 games but the Warriors would not allow it with their hot shooting. 

[SalvorMallow]

It's extremely rare that an official really is out to "get" your team (or the home team or whatever category in question). I think confirmation bias for refs is at play...you get to hear about "Joey Crawford just T-d up Duncan for no reason!!" and then you start looking for it. And if you're looking for instances where Joey Crawford makes awful calls then you'll find them. That works for most every ref.

Curious question for the board, but is there an NBA ref that you know by name and you go "hell yeah! that guy rocks!!" or something to that effect?

Tony Brothers

[JETSET]

The quoted post was not about conspiracy theories but whether or not Crawford is a good ref and if reputation has anything to do with perception. So while it may be interesting to talk about refs as "goons," I don't see how that is relevant here. Maybe you misinterpreted what I said?

I think Crawford makes bad calls when the NBA needs him to.  No ref makes only good calls or only bad calls.  It's a mixed bag until crunch time and that's when you see a Crawford or Foster appear.

[Atlantaholic]

We all knew the refs were gonna screw us in the Cavs series, but we have already been getting screwed pretty badly since the Brooklyn series. Positive? The team is used to playing and winning games while getting shafted with the calls. Here's hoping that the terrible officiating doesn't reach a whole other level this series.

[Gray Mule]

Someone who knows how to do it:  Check out Bron's record when Joey Crawford

is one of the officials VS when he's not.

 

Can't prove a thing and don't remember where I heard that Joey Crawford is "The King's"

personal referee.

 

Final question:  Why did the odds change when the officials for tonight's game was announced?

Did this really happen or did someone just dream this up? 

[AHF]

For that instance, sure. But if I were to ask you whether or not you think Joey Crawford makes more bad calls than most, would you agree? Which probably means that if he is making more bad calls, then he probably makes more calls in general. I guess there's a possibility that an individual might say that Joey Crawford *never* makes a good call, that all of his calls are bad, and that doesn't necessarily mean that he makes more/fewer calls.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/referees/crawfjo99r.html

I'm not sure which way people initially lean on how Joey Crawford is as an official, but it's fairly clear he makes fewer calls than the rest of the NBA. It seems to me to be far-fetched that all of his calls are bad. This sounds like a prime candidate for confirmation bias to creep in. People only recall Crawford's bad calls because they've heard about how bad he is so those are the instances that bring out the "I HATE JOEY CRAWFORD!!!"

Joey Crawford might actually be bad, but I think the perception of him is worse than the truth because his name gets thrown around so often and instinctively brings out the "oh no, not Joey Crawford!" from fans all around.

 

Not even all of Tim Donaghy's call were bad so clearly not all of Crawford's are.  I just thought the Crawford/Duncan example was hard to roll with because that was a case of clear abuse by an official.

 

I also agree with the confirmation bias concept you tossed out in the post.  That would apply under either circumstance - where the ref is actually exhibiting bias and where he isn't.  You need the broader data set to really discriminate.