THE NBA SAYS IT WILL BE MORE OPEN ABOUT REFEREEING. Sam Amick in USA TODAY SPORTS WEEKLY (March 12-18) reports that “New NBA commissioner Adam Silver has vowed to have an open dialogue about officiating….” Mike Bantom, the NBA executive vice president of referee operations, says that every call in every game is watched twice by the NBA and that the NBA has close to a million events logged for every referee. They have a database for determining the percentages of incorrect calls.
Baseball has revealed the percentages of bad calls on balls and strikes by individual umpires. I would be surprised if the NBA provided information for individual referees, although what fans really want to know is even more specific. Were particular calls in games they have spent a couple hours of their lives watching made correctly? Nevertheless, I would be happy to see aggregate percentages for how moving picks—to choose a simple example—are called.