I just want to add that I don't think the refs whistle for teams, but for PLAYERS.
They're biased in favour of certain playstyles, and certain players.
On top of that, they're biased for specific GAMES.
That means:
- certain players get preferential treatment over others
- certain games need to be won/lost in order to make the league more "fun"
In short; it's all for the sake of entertainment
Not for the sake of finding the best basketball players.
Do you think the best team in the NBA wins the championship each year? If the refs are controlling the outcome of the games and it’s all for entertainment shouldn’t the team with the most popular player be winning regularly. Where’s Lebron? Why is KD on vacation right now. Those are 2 of the 3 most popular players in the NBA.
Stop thinking in absolutes.
No, I don't think the best team wins every single year. Yes I think the best team has the highest chance to win every single year.
And again; I'm not saying anything about teams; I'm talking about players. Just having two players that get preferential treatment doesn't mean you'll win. It means you have a higher chance of getting a bunch of fouls called in your favour.
Feel free to disagree with that all you want, but stop extrapolating it into nonsense like "OH YoU thINk BeSt teAM wiN?!/1"
.edit: the winner of the NBA championship gets to call themselves the best basketball team in the NBA. Doesn't mean they actually are, realistically. If you don't understand why, I can try and explain it
I wasn’t asking who gets to call themselves the best team, I wanted to know if you think the best team is actually the one winning the championship year in and year out. Was there a year when a team won and you thought they didn’t deserve it and the officials slanted the series to the point where the best team didn’t end up winning.
Does the home team typically get more calls than the road team? Sure. Do super stars get certain calls that average Players don’t, Yep. Does that mean the NBA is for entertainment only like the WWE? I don’t think so. The best team will win the series.
The edit was a side note, meant to give more context to my opinion, not a direct response to your question.
Let me put it this way;
Every single time a game in a 7 game playoffs series was decided by 4 points or less, you can point to a single call that, if called differently, a different set of players would've had a chance for a ring.
So I'll say again, stop thinking in absolutes - start thinking in percentages. Because that's how the reffing affects the league.
Why think about percentages in the abstract though? If your assumption has any weight you should be able to provide a dataset - say, games in a 7 game series decided by 4 points or less.
The idea that all close games in a series are inherently the referees’ fault for a team’s loss - which is effectively what is being said, as no game is called perfectly - strikes me as silly without proof or at least an effort.
You literally can't imagine that?
Man. What a world.
I think you might have misunderstood what I'm trying to to say. Let me try again.
What you've said is a logical tautology until further examination.
“Referees impact basketball games” is always true.
“Every single close game of basketball was decided closely” is always true.
Neither is particularly revelatory or pertinent to the case you are trying to make, IMO. They’re jumping off points for it, but they’re not conclusions you can use to say:
“because referees impact basketball games, and every single close game of basketball is decidedly closely, the referees are a more-significant force in close basketball games than other factors.”
Which is, as I understand it, your point. I think you need more data to say that comfortably. 
100 possessions per game
40 fouls per game
in a 7 game series
700 possessions
280 fouls called
1 mistake can mean the difference
Refs would have to have LESS THAN 0.36% error rate to not affect the outcome of the series.
Now, look at end-of-game reports and how often refs get it wrong.
That's all I'm saying.
All of this excludes non-calls.
I might be wildly wrong here but before doing any looking at numbers, in my mind, it was already so ludicrously close that a ref could super easily swing a close series.
I dunno if you missed this, Kernewek, but there's some quick stats crunching.
Yeah sorry man been busy. My question for you is whether this is equal, more, or less important to the outcome of a close game than, say, Smart not making the pass to a wide open Tatum.
I would say any given call is slightly less important than the play on the floor. There are some egregious exceptions, of course, but they’re very in the minority IMO.
No worries bro.
What you're asking is completely irrelevant.
Refs should have 0% effect on the outcome of a game, yet we just determined that even if they have 0.4% effect, they can affect the outcome of the game.
So the answer to your question is irrelevant because it's literally unrelated to the question about the referees.
It's like asking "what if the ball was square". Yeah that'd affect the outcome of the game but has NOTHING to do with the referees.
What if Marcus made a certain pass? Well then JT had 50% (or whatever his effective shooting% was) of getting a bucket ... ? Again, nothing to do with bad/good refs.
If anything, you wanna say that a referee getting a call wrong means a two-way swing. Not just a missed shot, but also possession for the opponent. No chance of scoring, no chance of a rebound, and they DO get that chance. As opposed to keeping the ball, where you do get a chance to shoot, you do get a chance to rebound.
Off topic, how does the math work. Say the Celts and Bucks are basically even, but the refs' 0.4% effect on the game (swinging the game by 5 points or something in a 2 point loss, for example) ends up giving the Bucks the win. Don't the refs end up effecting the game 100% lol.
That's a different statistic, and along the lines of: there's a 50% chance the mavs win the title; they either win, or they don't
Anyway, it was total napkin-math. Doesn't take into account a lotta things, like the real world implications of an extra foul here or there. In reality might affect the score more or less, due to players (not) fouling out, momentum shifting, people getting hurt, precedent being set for further foul calls, etc etc etc.
Point remains; one wrong call or non-call can affect a game. HUGEly.
