MAKING REFEREE RATINGS PUBLIC—UPDATE.

MAKING REFEREE RATINGS PUBLIC—UPDATE. I recommended here that the National Basketball Association should make all its referee ratings for individual games public. One argument I made in support of the recommendation was that Referee Tim Donaghy had been accused of fixing games he refereed, and that “Commissioner Stern of the National Basketball Association would be a lot happier right now if he could point to contemporary evaluations of the disgraced referee’s calls.” Tim Donaghy has now served his jail time and has written a book claiming that he bet successfully on games he did not referee. He attributes his success to knowing how those games would be refereed, either because he had figured out from the referee assignments that the league wanted a certain result or because he knew that a referee for the game had strong feelings for or against one of the players. This link provides excerpts of the allegations for particular games. Are the allegations true? I repeat that Commissioner Stern would be a lot happier now if he could point to contemporary evaluations of the refereeing in those games.