FanPost

Referees question - stats/data analysis?

Just curious, I read this article:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2821953-nba-denies-espns-report-that-tim-donaghy-fixed-games?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial

and thought it would be interesting to run some data analysis on which refs/ref-crews usually are on the side of certain bets. Anyone do these kinds of things? Or maybe someone has already done them in the past? Im not even sure if the data is out there publicly to sift over.

I'm not a better so not sure what would be interesting things to find out... the article implied if the ref "favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time" is an interesting metric to look up, or im guessing more interesting ones would be if underdog won, or underdog covered the spread, or the home team won (as maybe they don't want the crowds becoming an angry mob in the parking lot).
or maybe its more rare to find a betting ref vs a homer ref that prefers his home/childhood team(s) or likes certain teams/stars (they are fans of the sport so maybe unconsciously they may call more fouls on opposing teams)... so another interesting metric would be how many fouls were called on certain teams or home/away teams, etc.

We need some Ben Dietrich to do some fancy A.I./stat analysis across the NBA (and NFL) to get some refs fired haha.

I remember some thoughts that some refs hate 'the process' (or there was one who was born in Philly so he may not want to seem biased and actually calls more fouls on the Sixers so no one calls him a homer).

Anyhoo, tell me your thoughts on the matter!

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