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SOLUTION TO NBA OFFICIATING: I’m serious, this is a game-changer, literally

The solution to the godawful NBA officiating starts with the creation of a complete and completely objective NBA officiating website—details below .  I floated the idea to…a senior-level executive of an NBA team, and he said “great!” but said they couldn’t fund it because it needs to be independent to have validity.  I don’t have the money, time, or the expertise to make this happen, but perhaps some of your readers do—it’s definitely a group project.

The officiating website I envision would be a resource for data without subjective content.  It would therefore *only* include:

Referee calls: video of every call—and every type of call—made by refs of every NBA game, in real speed, and slow motion, from every angle available from broadcasts. (Without audio.)
Statistics: raw data, counting stats—no percentages, ratios, graphs, etc.  Even choosing which metrics to post is subjective.  The site would only provide raw data to give users the means to conduct their own studies.

There would be no commentary, no chat boards, no links, etc.  There would also be no non-calls content.  It won’t be necessary.

If the raw data is available and made easily accessible to site users, fans, students, academic institutions, bloggers, et. al. they will provide the secondary content—the commentary and analysis.  If the site gives them something to work with, they’ll embed the video on their blogs and cite the statistics, and provide the commentary that will spur debate.

Furthermore, non-calls are as important an issue as whistled action, but eventually (and swiftly, I believe) non-call sites will pop up.  Tons will be partisan, but I think you’ll see objective-as-possible Sloan-academic-type sites emerge.  Objective-as-possible non-calls means trying to show all plays of all NBA games that 1) violate rules from the official NBA rulebook (which I believe is also available in video on nba.com) and 2) non-calls can be compared with whistled action from ‘my’ objective officiating site.  The non-calls issue is much more complicated and much more subjective—a longterm project, but the inherent subjectivity is why it must be left to the public, and not appear on the objective officiating site I envision.

I think this site is necessary regardless of the way the NBA league offices handle officiating review, and it’s understandable that the NBA league offices could never produce a site like this, for various reasons, but their infuriating behind-closed-doors policies of dealing with officiating just begs for public response—a cogent, progressive response.  NBA officiating simply *must* be subjected to independent analysis.  And I truly believe the site I propose is the beginning of the solution.  As Justice Brandeis noted: sunlight is the best disinfectant.

So consider just a few aspects of the site’s utility.  Besides all the conspiracy theories and beliefs that refs intentionally favor or seek to harm certain teams, unconscious bias is simply an inherent aspect of the human condition.  However well intentioned these guys are, refs aren’t robots.  But being forced to discover and confront those biases, I like to think refs will likely feel impelled to improve.  And either way, they’ll definitely feel the heat when the whole world can point to objective measurements of their biases.  And who knows, maybe the data will vindicate refs of certain accusations.  And of course, the data won’t just be used to confirm or invalidate popular beliefs about officiating; surely it will elucidate other matters.  For example, I suspect the data will assist in extricating the ‘noise’ from analytical studies of the NBA game.  But yeah, it will also help address accusations of malintent, “Everyone knows that this or that Ref X totally screws this or that team”—fighting, urge, to, use, Spurs, as, completely, randomly, chosen, example.  And my hope beyond hope is that someday, studies of the data and non-calls data will show *definitively* which refs just suck.  Early retirement!

And there are as many other possibilities as there are NBA fans who have the curiosity and creativity to ask questions and the dedication to pursue answers.

Best,

Michael

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That was long enough, but if you want an idea or two of how to get the ball rolling…

Obviously the builders of the site would need to watch every single NBA game each season as the season progresses, record them all, and post and categorize every, every charge, every moving screen, every travel, every palm, even every out-of-bounds.  And yes, they’d even have to watch Pistons games.

Also, it’s quite plausible to start with the ’09-’10 season, though it might take a bit of organizing and persuasion…  I’d contact every team in the league by email and phone, requesting one copy of DVDs of all of that team’s games from the ’09-’10 season.  Consider this idea:

First a polite email is written that 500 fans (or 5,000 fans) electronically sign.  Then a PR rep for each team is contacted at the same time (approximately, no watch synchronizing necessary I think) by phone just to let them know the email is coming, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.  It’s easy to get teams’ PR reps on the phone—I did it with almost every team last season for a project—and their email contact info is available, too.

Then the email is sent with every team carbon copied—and it can be made known, tactfully, that their response will be public: “our 5,000 petitioners eagerly await your reply!”  I don’t even know how much cajoling would be necessary.  I suspect fan-interactive teams like the Mavericks would be happy to send the DVDs (especially considering the umbrage they’ve taken with the quality of officiating), and maybe other metric-centric teams will too.  But if a few teams send the DVDs (maybe even just one team) others might feel compelled to comply with the request.

That may not work, but once the site is established, if it gets serious traffic…well, traffic is everything.  If the site gets big traffic and publicity of any sort, grassroots or otherwise, I imagine it could build the clout to get teams to send DVDs of all games going back 20 years.  How cool would it be to use officiating data to analyze (umm, for someone else to analyze) how the game has changed through the years–that is, as the rules, trends, and basketball culture have changed?

Hey, if you’ve gone all the way through this email, thanks, that’s awesome.  I truly believe that the site I envision could be the beginning of a better League.  If you agree with me, well Mr. Huge Audience Blogger…

Best, again,

Michael

“What’s a fair amount of money to pay the best basketball players in the world? That’s something that would take a team of experts to determine, and even then it would be one part guesswork. Maybe they are paid too much. Maybe they are paid too little. Maybe the owners who lose money are victims of the economy and the cost of international expansion. Maybe they are victims of failing to control their own spending. Maybe the owners have been bleeding cash, and some of the hurt must be passed on to the players. On the other hand maybe it was just a couple of bad years, and this is all a negotiating tactic.”

Abbott wants answers for meaningless questions.  How much should a player make?  What’s fair?  Without a free market a player’s true value cannot be determined.  While there is a salary cap in place, binds on bidding for international players (gee, where does Ricky Rubio play again?), and all those trade restrictions, the value of players is guesswork at best.  (Especially considering that player value is relative to team need—Antwan Jamison represents a huge waste of money for DC but might be of value to Cleveland.)  Trades can also help to correct stupid mistakes by general managers.  Without trade restrictions, players simply move to where they are most valued.  For example, this summer Rudy Gay will be given a maximum salary (mark my words) to be the cornerstone of a franchise.  By the time the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in summer ’11 it will have become apparent that Gay can’t do the job and is just costing a team a bunch of money for limited returns.  But to a contender that’s looking for that last piece to put them over the top—the role Richard Jefferson was supposed to play for San Antonio this year—the price might be worth it.

Of course a player’s value isn’t limited to his ability to help his team win games.  It’s not unreasonable for a player’s marketability, among other things, to come into play.  And yeah, that thinking led Memphis to sign Allen Iverson, but that doesn’t mean the idea is invalid.  It just means Memphis Grizzlies management is stupid.  Also, I suspect that since there are merely thirty potential bidders (teams), with disparate spending capabilities and revenue streams, even dissolving restrictions would only give us a good, not great, sense of a player’s value.  If there were a thousand potential bidders, we’d have a more accurate valuation.  (This and the prospect of French cheerleaders are the only points for European expansion.)  But since expansion of any sort isn’t immanent, the best way I can think of to deal with this small v. big market value and ownership means disparity is to impose a powerful revenue sharing system and luxury tax.  How and how much?  I don’t know; I can’t; we can’t.  Abbott says owners are very secretive of their balance sheets.

But whether it’s a two dollars-for-dollar luxury tax or whether taxes and league revenue are distributed on a sliding scale correlating to market size, there’s a way to balance the playing field.  They don’t even need to make these details public; figure out amongst themselves how they want to split up the pot—no one other than team owners care.  Instead, the salary cap, owners/players revenue sharing plan, and other stupid aspects of the CBA makes it seem like there are moral questions to consider, like what percentage of total league revenue is it fair for the players to get.  It’s an utterly meaningless question: players should make whatever the market will bear; the balance sheets of owners are between them and the IRS.  It’s not like this thinking is so radical; Art Modell once said NFL franchise owners were Republicans who vote Socialist.

Why have owners never come up with this step?  Off the top of my head I can think of three quick possibilities:

1) they feel it’s just too complicated (and requires too much effort and annual tinkering) to come up with a tax/revenue sharing system that enables owners with a net worth of $80 million (Peter Holt – San Antonio) to compete with billionaire owners.

2) their claims of losses and hardship are complete bullsh*t and the system currently in place is very beneficial for them.  Or at the very least, the current system isn’t hurting them.  In this case, their labor negotiations are just about making more money—I don’t have a problem with this.

3) they are (as a group) far less intelligent than one might expect from some of the richest people on Earth.  This would indicate that a good number of these owners owe their fortunes to fortune—that they’re just a bunch of lucky bastards.

My guess?  A combo of all three, but more the latter two.  Yes, balancing the playing field might be tricky, but it’s doable.  But more than that, I think some owners are probably doing quite well in this system and have no interest in changing it to benefit their competition.  And there’s no question about the third, at least in some cases.  Some owners are fortunate sons—Charles Dolan’s bills are mostly inherited—and perhaps some are just incredibly lucky, and their wealth isn’t indicative of their business acumen.

Really, I wouldn’t care a wit about this stuff, if it didn’t have a direct impact on the quality of the NBA game.  But it does, and I do.

For one thing, showing losses on your books doesn’t mean your company/business model is failing.  The NBA offices and owners are spending capital to make long-term improvements in the league, and that costs money.  Why is that the concern of the Player’s Association?  It is, sort of, but only because of past blunders.

I don’t know much about common business practices, deals with unions, and such, and I don’t know the details of the NBA’s CBA; but it seems to me that the salary cap is the biggest problem here.  As I see it, it’s not the responsibility of labor to worry about the overall income of the company.  That’s management’s problem.  But in submitting to the owners in previous agreements, accepting a salary cap, they also agreed that that cap would be based on league revenue; the players get 57%.  That doesn’t and never did make any sense to me.  They’re agreeing to receive a percentage of the overall revenue, but they don’t have a say in how the league’s business is conducted, how the owners choose to invest revenue.  Basically, the players allowed themselves to be subject to the ups and downs of the league without getting a seat at the table.  I don’t think having a seat at that table is really anything the players ever wanted, or should want.  Leave the direction of the league to ownership, sure, but players allowing their salaries to be directly tied to the owners decisions about expenditures is just silly.

Now of course employee payroll is always based on the state of the companies for which they work, but not directly, not as a collectively agreed percentage of revenue.  Rather, without a salary cap, the free market would determine the value of a player.  Why not just let supply and demand determine value?  Of course, that an old issue, fifteen years old, to be exact.  Ever since Kevin Garnett signed that immense contract (it was what, $126 million over 7 years?) back in ’95 (I believe) ownership has been loudly freaking out about player salaries.  The real problem there is that owners couldn’t keep other owners from breaking ranks and offering huge salaries without colluding.  But small market teams and owners who are only $100 millionaires, not $800 millionaires or billionaires, didn’t want to compete with Mark Cuban or big market teams.  The answer to this was never to institute a salary cap and unnecessarily entangle league income with player salaries.  The league should have just instituted smarter revenue sharing practices with huge luxury tax penalties.  The luxury taxes are currently dollar for dollar.  Well, go ahead and get rid of the salary cap and require owners to pay $2 for every $1 they go over the luxury tax line.  So when the Knicks spend $100 million and the cap is $50 million, instead of the other owners crying foul, they can just divvy up the $100 million in luxury tax the Knicks will be paying them.

This is way too long already, so I’ll just stop here.  In the end, the labor discussions for the next CBA will probably look like they always do: owners being dishonest about their financial burdens, players being stupid enough to put themselves in a position to be smacked around by ownership.  That Billy Hunter is still the head of the Union ten years after he f#cked up the last CBA indicates how things will turn out this time.

And I wouldn’t give a damn about any of this, except that it directly impacts the quality of play, the quality of talent the teams can put on the floor.

The only thing that would be better than LeBron in New York (other than him being in Houston) would be for him to be in Brooklyn on the Nets, a team with even more money (via Russia w. love) and Beyonce on the sidelines.  Of course, there is no team in Brooklyn, so this would take an incredible leap of faith on LeBron’s part, and wouldn’t really be worth the risk that he end up in NJ for years and years.  No one should have to endure that.

The dude is 36 but he still has the motor to go at top speed for 36 minutes a game and competently defend shooting guards.  And though he doesn’t score much, he’s shooting efficiently.  And when he’s on the floor, the ball movement is terrific.  Whatever the Mavs’ options in a given possession, Kidd will make the most of it.  Unfortunately, the rest of the posse doesn’t do a ton with the opportunities.

Jason Terry can’t shoot straight this year.  I don’t know what’s up with that.  Actually, his three-point shooting has been going downhill the last few years—maybe he lost a half step and doesn’t get quite the same space that he used to get?—but whatever the case, he hasn’t been able to hit the side of a barn this year.  And since like 80% of his value is in his shooting, that’s something of an issue.

Marion is still a good player, but he’s not nearly the big rebounding versatile defending combo forward anymore.  Sure, he’s still got some bounce, but at this point here’s just…good.  And Jason Terry can’t shoot straight this year.  His three-point shooting has been going downhill the last few years.  Whether he’s lost a half step and can’t get the same space to shoot that he used to, I don’t know.  But whatever the case,  he can’t hit the side of a barn this year, and since like 90% of his value is in his shooting, that’s something of an issue.  And then there’s Josh Howard.  Yeah, sure, he’s coming off surgery, will get better, yadda yadda, but even healthy he too is merely a good player.  I note this because in the Mavs’ run to the Finals in ’06 he was terrific and I thought he looked good to stay at that level.  But it didn’t happen.  He shot very well from outside for two years, but he can’t shoot straight anymore either, regardless of his health.

Really, Jose Juan Barea is the only Mavs player other than Dirk who’s having a great year.  He has real value as long as he continues to shoot the lights out and do a decent job of staying in front of point guards.  But it’s not like he’s an up and coming game changer.

I guess I see the Mavericks as contenders by default, merely because neither Denver nor Phoenix are for real.  The Mavs have a decent shot at the Western Conference Finals, I suppose, but that’s their upside.  And the weird thing is, I think of the Mavs as being such a smart franchise, but in a salary cap NBA, flexibility is the truest expression of management smarts (after wins).  But they signed Jason Terry to a butt-ugly that clogs up their cap space for the next few years.  And yeah, Dirk’s a machine, but how long can he do that for another two, three, four years?  Maybe.  Probably not.

This makes me feel weirdly guilty, like I’m copping out.  And I hear this guilt-inducing voice in my head—specifically the voice of Han, the badguy from Enter the Dragon.  After Bruce Lee is captured by Han’s minions  and brought out to the courtyard, Han wants Roper (the obligatory white good guy) to fight him.  But Roper refuses (in a way that doesn’t make him look wussy, a sort of “I won’t be your puppet” thing) and Han says to him, “So!  There is a point you will not go beyond.”  That’s what I hear each time I don’t want to go what feels like the extra mile.  And the thing is, I don’t know if I can answer that in a way that doesn’t make me sound wussy.  I mean, right after Roper refuses to fight Lee, he whups like twenty guys, fighting with Lee.  There’s nobody for me to whup.

I was thinking of these things because I was just writing about the Mavericks and why they aren’t contenders.  Some of it is observation, but I think some of the raw numbers support these observations, and I’d like to take a slightly (slightly) deeper look into it.  But each step you take begs more questions, and more and more, and the whole thing makes me sleepy.  But maybe I’ll take a nap, and when I wake up (like, tomorrow) I’ll try to find the patience to address some of the questions.  We’ll see.

I just can’t believe in anything that Denver does.  Year after year, regardless of the composition of their roster, they’re the same team; they’ll play well enough to convince themselves and some others that they can make noise in the playoffs.  But they can’t, and they don’t.  This is like their fifth or sixth date now, and they still haven’t even copped a feel.  Me, I need to know what’s what by the end of the second date, or I’m likely to blow up the roster and rebuild around my franchise player (that’s me).  I mean, you can work the trade market, or try to spend your way to the promised land (if you have the cap space), but if the foundation isn’t there, free agency is more likely to give you VD than a championship banner.

Moves like the (swiftly aging) Billups acquisition, picking J.R. Smith off the clearance rack, Linas Kleiza from the end of the first round of the draft, Nene from Sloan Ket… (Umm, can you  make cancer jokes once a guy is totally healthy and finally playing up to his contract?  Yes?  No?  I’ll go with no).  Whatever, these are nips and tucks, injections, the occasional facelift.  But basketball is a top-down business: what happens on the floor is a near-perfect distillation of the organization.  They’ve made some good moves, but too many bad moves, they’re riding a coach whose defensive mastermind/player’s coach reputation was refuted two teams ago.  And their franchise player, Carmelo Anthony, is a star who’s jab-stepped at greatness, but never taken the plunge—it’s been seven years now.

I tell you, if the Nuggets were to win the championship this year (impossible) and I were in Denver to watch the parade, I would probably still stand there in the crowd arms crossed saying, “I don’t believe in this team.  I just don’t see it happening.”  Maybe I’d only be thinking it, though, since I wouldn’t want to offend any pretty Nuggets fans in the mood for like.  But the scenario is only barely conceivable because of my wild imagination; it’s all but implausible.  The Nuggets are not contenders.  They are currently off to the best start at home they’ve ever had.  It’s chimerical, smoke and mirrors.  Talk to me when Kenyon Martin makes the veteran’s minimum.

Also, when I was in Miami (err, Miami Beach) last season to write about the Heat, I spent New Year’s Eve on South Beach and on Espanola Way at the Latin music clubs among the overjoyed people, great music, the loveliest women, lots of booze, the loveliest women, and the loveliest women.  Miami’s a good place to be in the winter.

Ah, yes, the rest of the roster beyond Beasley should be enticing, too.  They have Mario Chalmers through next season under a million dollars.  Chalmers is/will be a dead eye shooter, and early small samples from this season indicate that he’s going from an OK-but-nothing-special slasher to someone who can actually finish at the rim.  However, he’s not great at finding teammates off the dribble.  Hopefully he improves some, but it’s not a huge deal, since Wade is the rare amazing scorer who also has a really good sense for finding guys.  Provided Wade re-signs (and they re-sign Chalmers in two years) the Heat are set in the back court.

Beyond those three and the useful Daequan Cook (less than useful so far this season, but he’ll be fine) they also have…nothing, after this season.  (I believe they can opt out of the James Jones contract.)  So they can do whatever they wish to reinvent themselves.  And the front office has that rare combination of a guy who really knows what he’s doing, in Pat Riley, but whose ego wasn’t so big (well, it was and is, but not SO BIG) that he makes a dumb move like passing on Beasley because he thought the guy was flaky—not that Beasley isn’t, but whatever.  On draft night Riley basically said, “I didn’t want him, but the rest of my people insisted and insisted and insisted so I gave in and went drafted him.”  And it’s good that he did.

Is there any doubt that the Rockets are going to set a record for taking charges?  Well, of course there has to be some doubt, unless you know where one can find charges-drawn stats, current and historical; I don’t.  Whatever the case, drawing charges is clearly a huge part of their defensive strategy, and it’s amazing to me that you can find steals, blocks, turnovers on every basketball site around— but not charges drawn, nor offensive fouls committed.  That’s not true; it’s not amazing to me.  ESPN just added raw +/- stats (are these of any value at all?) to their box scores, this season, and are mighty excited about it, but charges drawn—considerably more valuable than shots blocked—gets no attention.

Whatever the case, the Rockets have put together a roster of guys who play way above their salaries, and I suspect that drawing charges is something they look at, and something they teach their young players.  Scola didn’t need to be taught of course.  In Argentina, Italy, and a variety of other countries that play ball, “charge” and “flop” are the first words they learn after “mommy” and “daddy”.

Aaron Brooks is a notable exception, I think.  I haven’t been counting, but he doesn’t seem to take nearly as many charges as the rest of the guys on the team.  I imagine this is by design, because the team would prefer not to lose another starter; Brooks is really small.  I mean, small.  He was in the crowd of a Rice/Harvard game I went to in Houston, and he was smaller than either team’s point guard.

Anyway, along with taking a ton of charges, they move the ball around like, well, a Rick Adelman team—for the first time since he was hired.  And while a lot of people question how Tracy McGrady is going to fit in, even if  he’s in fine form, I only wonder about him playing off the ball.  He’s needed to play so much point-forward for the Rockets, and had so many isolations from the wing or the top of the key, I just haven’t seen him play off the ball much the last few years.  That he’s one of the best passers in the game should help, a lot.  Yeah, I don’t think there are eight better teams in the west.

Amid a bevy if impressive sequences, the most significant play of the game to me (in a big picture way) occurred in the second half when Beasley caught the ball in the post against Oden.  It drives me nuts when smaller guys are in this situation and then dribble out only to fake and jab for 5 seconds before taking a step back jumper.  You see this at least two or three times a game.  But Beasley, recognizing the mismatch, dribbled out to the wing to exploit his speed advantage (Oden followed half way) and then went right at the rim.

Oden slid his feet quickly enough to keep pace with Beasley, jumped in perfect sync with him to contest the shot, and kept his arms straight up to avoid fouling.  There was contact in the air, but it was incidental, chests and shoulders, and refs typically don’t call if you keep your arms up and as long as one guy doesn’t go flying.  Oden played it just perfectly.  But Beasley scored anyway.  He took the contact in the air, switched the ball to his right hand, and finished softly over Oden.

GREG ODEN

That Oden didn’t block the shot is irrelevant.  He’s been a shot-blocking machine this season, and that alone invalidates concerns that microfracture surgery would limit his explosiveness.  No, the only thing between Oden and true greatness is foul trouble (his other injuries don’t seem like chronic threats.)  If he can limit his fouls enough to stay on the court 35 minutes a game, he’ll be a superstar.  That a goodly number people wrote him off as a bust as soon as he had knee surgery was absurd.  But I also find fault in the plethora of apologist commentary that said we need to adjust our expectations of Oden’s ceiling, to appreciate him for what he is.  For example, consider John Hollinger’s (espn insider) profile on Oden from the pre-season:

So let’s be honest here about what Oden is and what he isn’t. What he is, certainly, is an effective, slightly awkward big man who can rebound and block shots. What he is not is a once-in-a-generation center. Oden is too awkward offensively and too foul-prone to be the kind of dominator some thought he might be coming out of Ohio State.

Wipe away those expectations and it was a solid rookie season.

I wouldn’t take umbrage with this if Hollinger had spoken in the past tense and told us what Oden was and wasn’t in his rookie year, that he wasn’t a once-in-a-generation force in his rookie year.  Of course he wasn’t.  Between injuries and going one-and-done in college, Oden has played vastly less basketball than any previous NBA great center in his rookie year.  Check out this list of all time shot-blockers; it’s made up almost exclusively of guys who played three or four years in college.  And it isn’t just the all time greats and players from previous generations.  Check out the list of active shot-blockers; only the high-school kids had less experience than Oden and only Dwight Howard caught on quicker than Oden has been.  He’s much better than the others were at 21.  Really, considering the circumstances, it’s way too early to give up on hoping that Oden can be a once-in-a-generation dominating center.  I’m not saying he will, but I think he’s got a good shot.

Regarding his supposed clumsiness, so far he’s less turnover-prone than a bunch of greats at his age, like Patrick Ewing.  How else do you judge clumsiness in basketball?  Lack of obvious grace?  Whatever; Dwight Howard is somewhat less than graceful on offense.  Oden’s already got a much better shooting touch.  And how does anyone know if Oden will remain foul-prone?  What evidence is there that it’s a question of innate ability?  Frankly, the most important data I see for Oden is his free-throw percentage.  He took 200 foul shots in college, lefty, while recovering from right-hand surgery.  And he sunk over 60% of them.  So far this season he’s over 75% with his right hand.  That he picked up shooting it lefty in so little time and shot it better than a number of highly skilled alltime great bigs…  This year’s present clip, albeit a fairly small sample size, isn’t likely a clip, given that lefty shooting in college.  It’s more likely to be a result of time, practice, repetitions.  It’s evidence of his ability to improve.

Anyway, regardless of what Bill Simmons and lesser lights believe, I think the Oden or Durant argument is far from over.  But for injury concerns for Oden, they’d be neck and neck.  Durant’s a scoring machine, but he’s not yet anywhere close to the defender Oden is.  And while Oden isn’t nearly as good an offensive player, but he’s far better on offense than Durant is on defense.  Then again yesterday Durant looked like top-form Andrei Kirilenko on defense for a few plays, so who knows.  That’s the point, who knows?