APBRmetrics

I have begun a little project of uploading videos of bad calls to YouTube. I welcome any comments and suggestions.

My YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUOSpIqoj9e5teqkxsmzd-w

Spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... E5SWDNRSHc

Blog:
http://nbarefwatch.wordpress.com/

I'd be more interested in seeing full-game analysis instead of a catalog of calls you've deemed "bad." Roland did this a couple times for 82games. If you track bad calls you might eventually compile enough data to see some patterns. What I'd love to see is a comprehensive analysis of refs. How accurate are they? Is there a pattern to their bad calls? Is there evidence of bias? Are there statistically significant effects from their errors? Do bad calls "even out"? How big a difference is there between good refs and bad refs?

Essentially, grades for refs. It's something I've been interested in doing for a couple years now, but I have too much to do already.

My dos centavos.

Yea its really tough to grade like this because you are only going to be able to find ones that the broadcast team makes a big deal about and replays from a bunch of different angles.

Like Kjb said , I think it would be more interesting to have a comprehensive analysis.
You could look at the play by play data and maybe come up with stats and rankings to find stuff like:

Which refs call defensive 3 seconds the most, offensive 3 seconds?
Do certain refs call less fouls on superstars than others? more?
Who usually calls charge on a block / charge play, who calls block.
Who swallows their whistles on the last play of the game vs who is willing to send players to the line during that situation.
Even just a basic # of fouls per game by ref would be pretty interesting .

Edit: it would help to have play by play data that denotes the actual ref that blew their whistle, I don't think this exists though

Also it would be interesting to see how many fouls per game home court advantage is worth.

By the way, I think whoever organizes a comprehensive analysis of NBA refs is going to have data for research papers on a variety of subjects. You'll be presenting at Sloan.

It's certainly not a waste of time to compile data on bad calls. But what kind of sucks about the NBA is how inconsistant calls seem to be. From game to game, some crews call things tighter or looser than others. It might have to do with what refs are calling the game or perhaps it has to do with the scenario that the game has come to. For example... close game or blowout. Maybe they call fouls more on the team that is behind or at home (I think there's a thread dispelling that myth). You obviously have the situation where it's late in the game and refs tend to swallow the whistle.

Sometimes things might be different depending on the type of call. I think block/charge is called pretty consistently (as in, they are going to call something... whether they get it right is another story). But the body fouls as a player goes to the basket might not be. Then of course, it depends on who the player is. We've all heard of the myth that stars get more calls than regular players do.

So I kind of echo the sentiment of others on this thread. It might be more useful to catalog all of the calls and do your analysis based on both the good and bad calls. There are alot more questions you can answer with that.

...We've all heard of the myth that stars get more calls than regular players do...

Isn't a myth a story that actually isn't true? Is this ^^ known to be a myth?

Players coming off the bench seem to get more fouls per minute than they do as starters. Is there a good reason for this? Do they play differently, or are their roles different? Or do they just get less respect from refs?

Mike G wrote:

...We've all heard of the myth that stars get more calls than regular players do...

Isn't a myth a story that actually isn't true? Is this ^^ known to be a myth?

Players coming off the bench seem to get more fouls per minute than they do as starters. Is there a good reason for this? Do they play differently, or are their roles different? Or do they just get less respect from refs?

I was using the word "myth" to mean that we didn't know whether or not it was true.

And I'm not sure if data has conclusively come out and said whether it is. I mean, I personally believe it's true just because I see Lebron James get these touch foul calls that they don't usually call for some random bench player.

Not to get esoteric, but in my view "myths" are stories that may not necessarily be literally true, but they're used to illustrate and teach truth.

It would not surprise me that bench players get more fouls per minute. That's the way I played the game. Coming off the bench, I averaged one charge taken per game, and got about 3 blocking fouls to get the one charge. You can afford to be more physical than a player who is counted on to play 80% of the game.