“INEQUITY AVERSION”—DOES GUILT AFFECT FREE THROW SHOOTING? Nick sent me this link which led to this article about “inequity aversion.” The article discusses an empirical study which confirms “the hypothesis frequently put forth by Rasheed Wallace…that a player will often miss free throws after getting a foul that he does not deserve.” The empirical study showed that players made about 53% of their free throws after an obviously incorrect foul call (against average for NBA players of about 73%. The effect was stronger when the foul shooter’s team was ahead. The empirical study has support in this experiment by cognitive psychologists which measured neural responses in a simple game.
Archive for the ‘Basketball’ Category
“INEQUITY AVERSION”—DOES GUILT AFFECT FREE THROW SHOOTING?
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010ENFORCING A 55 MPH LIMIT WHEN EVERY CAR IS GOING 75.
Friday, May 28th, 2010ENFORCING A 55 MPH LIMIT WHEN EVERY CAR IS GOING 75. I had been thinking about the previous post since I read the Custance article. I was not thinking about any particular game. Nevertheless, so that people who are not diehard fans can evaluate this, here is a typical article about Glenn Davis, who weighs 295 pounds, being concussed the other night. The writer describes Davis as “staggering concussed down the court, tilting harder and harder to his left, a boxer out on his feet,” and essentially takes what happened to Davis as an amusing example of “playoff basketball.” And here is a quote (from this article) about another call in that game: “When the speed limit is 55, and every single car goes 75, what’s the one guy who gets pulled over supposed to think? Is that justice, or an almost random reminder who’s in charge?” It’s a good metaphor for “playoff basketball” rules.
PLAYOFF HOCKEY AND PLAYOFF BASKETBALL.
Friday, May 28th, 2010PLAYOFF HOCKEY AND “PLAYOFF BASKETBALL.” The Sporting News had an article on May 24 by Craig Custance about how much hockey has improved in the last five years as a result of the determination to enforce the rules precisely during the regular season and the playoffs. Custance says: “And without a doubt the game is better. It’s faster,… the skill level is at an all-time high and postseason play better reflects that of the regular season.” Now if basketball could learn from the hockey experience. Announcers will comment “That’s playoff basketball” after a rough play, but nobody knows what playoff basketball rules are—except that it’s a lot rougher and the calls are more unpredictable. Hockey figured out the right way to improve refereeing. If the calls in the regular season are uniform, improving refereeing in the playoffs will be a lot easier.
REVIEWING THE PERFORMANCE OF UMPIRES.
Saturday, April 10th, 2010REVIEWING THE PERFORMANCE OF UMPIRES. I take the controversy over umpiring as supporting my repeated argument that the reviews of umpires and referees should be made public. Umpires basically have jobs for life, while players and managers are scored on their performance every day, and they can be replaced by better performers. Last night, I was watching a broadcast of the Twins-White Sox game. A call on whether a ball in the corner was fair or foul went the Twins way so that there was no rancor on the part of the announcers when they chuckled that the first base umpire did not run down the line to get a better view. “He took ‘first base umpire’ literally and stayed at first base” was their reaction. It was refreshing to hear a comment about an umpire’s lack of hustle.
SABERMETRICS AND BASKETBALL.
Saturday, March 13th, 2010SABERMETRICS AND BASKETBALL. The March 12 Wall Street Journal also had an article comparing NBA teams that have at least one employee whose only duty is statistical analysis and those who don’t. The 15 teams that use a full-time statistician currently have a winning percentage of 59%. Those 15 teams who who don’t have a winning percentage of 41%.
SABERMETRICS COMES TO GOLF.
Saturday, March 13th, 2010SABERMETRICS COMES TO GOLF. The Wall Street Journal (March 12) had an article on a new measurement for putting success of professional golfers devised at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The statistic takes into account the relative difficulty of the green based on average performance, the relative strength of the field and the distance of the putt. (By the way, the average number of putts for a Tour pro from ten feet on the average course is 1.63. It’s at thirty feet that the average is about 2.0.) By the new metric, Luke Donald comes in #1 and Tiger Woods is #2. It’s nice to see that the article pays tribute to Bill James (”Together with other new statistics being developed by MIT and other academic institutions, “putts gained” could open up a new frontier in golf record-keeping and performance analysis comparable to the sea change in baseball statistics following Bill James’s pioneering work in the 1970s and 1980s.”)
BASKETBALL COACHES—FOOTBALL STYLE AND SOCCER STYLE.
Saturday, February 20th, 2010BASKETBALL COACHES—FOOTBALL STYLE AND SOCCER STYLE. In football, every play is planned after an interval for deliberation. Coaches now call most plays. In soccer, there is a continuous flow. A soccer coach has to prepare his players to react to events. Most basketball coaches take after football coaches. Aside from fast break situations, there are lots of set plays. At the end of the game, there are lots of time outs, and only rarely at the end of a game does a coach let his team take the ball after a basket and attack before the other team can set its defense. College coaches who don’t seem to call a lot of plays, who let their players play, (such as, I think, Jim Boeheim of Syracuse) are not rated as highly as their record deserves. Coaches by their nature hate mistakes. It seems that Tyrus Thomas has gotten crosswise with his coaches because he makes mistakes. For example, he is criticized for “poor shot selection”, although his shooting percentage is 48.6%, so he can’t be taking too many bad shots. (For comparison, Joakim Noah, who has a similar offensive game, is shooting 49.5% this year.) As for defense, you would think that you would want an agile shot blocker like Thomas to be doing some free lancing on defense (otherwise known as “playing help defense”). One report noted that Tyrus’s new coach is Larry Brown, who is know for being a stickler on how things are done. We’ll see what happens.
TYRUS THOMAS—DEFENSE VERSUS OFFENSE.
Saturday, February 20th, 2010TYRUS THOMAS—DEFENSE VERSUS OFFENSE. I am a lifelong Bulls fan. I can’t hold back from going out on a limb about their trading Tyrus Thomas. In any sport, it’s unusual to see a player with extraordinary physical talent being traded at an early stage in his career. The danger is that the trade will become famous for its folly. Over the past 50 years, the trades of Nolan Ryan and Lou Brock come to mind. Why. then, take the chance of trading Thomas? I have argued earlier that defense should be as important as offense in most sports, but that is not how players are valued. Thomas’s great strength, at least at this point in his career, is on defense, and teams, as well as journalists and fans, don’t pay a lot of attention to defense.
AN ARGUMENT FOR MAKING REFEREE REVIEWS PUBLIC IN SOCCER.
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009AN ARGUMENT FOR MAKING REFEREE REVIEWS PUBLIC IN SOCCER. I have posted several times that referee reviews in baseball, basketball and football should be made public. Some of my arguments were that referee mistakes are part of the narrative of the game, that the leagues have some protection in the event a referee is dishonest (as has been the case in professional basketball), and that, as I posted on here, forensic economists can “look for statistical evidence of malfeasance.” The weekend Financial Times (November 21/22) had an article about how 15 people have been arrested in a match-fixing scandal which may involve over 200 European soccer games in nine countries, including three games in the European Champions League. Those arrested are suspected of offering payments to “players, coaches, referees and officials from leagues.” I don’t know why sports officials don’t embrace the opportunity to forestall some of the questions about refereeing.
THE NBA’S THREE SETS OF “RULES.”
Sunday, November 1st, 2009THE NBA’S THREE SETS OF “RULES.” Refereeing basketball games is difficult enough, but the NBA makes it more difficult by having three different sets of “rules.” In addition to the rules that apply to over 90% of regular season games, there is a second set of “rules” for the last couple minutes of a game. How the game has been refereed for the first 46 minutes of the game provides no guidance. In fact, I think the only guidelines for the last two minutes are that the referees should “let the players play.” How much should they be allowed to “play”? Just “more.” (I have always thought that the reluctance to call fouls comes because the league tolerates uncertainty to try to avoid having games decided at the free throw line). The third set of “rules” is for playoff games, and again there is little guidance provided by the regular season. How is “playoff basketball” different? It’s not in the rulebook or in the customary law established over the 82 games of the regular season. The league grants referees a lot of discretion—each referee is in a sense on his own at the most important times. The league should not be surprised when it faces a wall of cynicism about refereeing.
