How Former Ref Tim Donaghy Conspired to Fix NBA Games • Hacker News Board

Re: How Former Ref Tim Donaghy Conspired to Fix NBA Games

#91

Post by tabtab » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

metabagel wrote: post #87

tabtab wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see a more objective scoring. Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles and sometimes have bad defensive nights. Nor is a single bad call evidence of bias, such as the nosebleed incident. An example of a good evaluation would be several professional referees, not employed by the NBA, observe the videos of that game from different angles, and score t…

You can be the judge. Here is the video. This wasn’t a close call. It was an egregiously wrong call. There was no way that ten out of ten impartial referees wouldn’t call this a foul on Kobe. https://youtu.be/mbWgWZjo1nI

Referees sometimes miss solid calls. No human can get 100% right when things happen in a fraction of a second. The Rams/Saints playoff game had a famous example (although there are conspiracy claims surrounding that also). I'll go with Hanlon's razor until something solid comes up.

Re: How Former Ref Tim Donaghy Conspired to Fix NBA Games

#92

Post by tabtab » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #78

tabtab wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see a more objective scoring. Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles and sometimes have bad defensive nights. Nor is a single bad call evidence of bias, such as the nosebleed incident. An example of a good evaluation would be several professional referees, not employed by the NBA, observe the videos of that game from different angles, and score t…

”Lopsided foul ratios are not solid evidence of bias by themselves. Teams play different styles” Also, near the end of the game, I expect losing teams to commit more fouls, giving up free throws to prevent their opponent from using up the shot clock time. ”observe the videos of that game from different angles” Ideally, you would process the video so that you can’t see who the players are or which team the player is o…

If the plays are dissected carefully, then the person involved shouldn't matter a whole lot. For example, a "flagrant foul" instead of a "common foul" may be a possibility if one does a "wind up" (pull back and then forward) of their arm(s) before a facial hit. If there's a disagreement about what constitutes a wind-up, then other wind-ups on other videos are analyzed and a mutual agreement hopefully appears about whether a specific case matches the agreed-upon working rule(s).

Perhaps the actual calls from the other game videos are used as a reference, such as whether a mere hint of wind-up is enough to score as such, or if the pull-back has to be very clear. Since different refs may have diff interpretations, perhaps the ref's history should be used as a guide. After all, the key question is about whether a specific game or season is "fixed", not all games from a given ref. If a ref has say 3 years of requiring mostly clear wind-up motions, and they were consistent on this during the target game, it probably wouldn't be considered an oddity.

Sure, that's a lot of digging and a lot of work, but if a play-off conspiracy has potential merit, it's worth it.

Re: How Former Ref Tim Donaghy Conspired to Fix NBA Games

#93

Post by tabtab » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #81

kodablah wrote: post #37

If the calls are so subjective that one can't tell the difference between a ref accidentally being way off and on purpose being way off, then maybe your sport/rules are the problem when being way off is either excusable or indeterminable. (in the NBA and some other sports, you can basically call a foul every play)

This is why I mostly stopped watching the NBA and basketball in general. The foul-calling situation is ridiculous. Many offensive fouls get called as defensive fouls and even good calls slow down the game significantly, more than it's already slowed by the million timeouts in the game. A simple solution would be to lower the amount of fouls a player is allowed to commit before they are sent off like the card system i…

So there would be a stretch where it were 4 versus 5 players? Oh my! The idea of minimizing free-throws seems worth exploring, though. Maybe store them up so they are all done at the end of a quarter. One can then go get a sandwich if they don't want to watch that.