Implicit Biases in Refereeing: Lessons from NBA Referees

TL;DR

This study investigates implicit biases in NBA refereeing, focusing on home advantage, player-specific benefits, and racial bias, revealing significant home bias during playoffs and player benefits, but no racial bias.

Contribution

The paper extends previous research by analyzing multiple types of implicit bias in NBA refereeing using detailed game data from 2015 onwards.

Findings

Home bias is pronounced during playoffs but has decreased since COVID-19.

Certain players benefit more from referee decisions than expected by chance.

No evidence found for racial bias in refereeing decisions.

Abstract

Implicit biases occur automatically and unintentionally and are particularly present when we have to make split second decisions. One such situations appears in refereeing, where referees have to make an instantaneous decision on a potential violation. In this work we revisit and extend some of the existing work on implicit biases in refereeing. In particular, we focus on refereeing in the NBA and examine three different types of implicit bias; (i) home-vs-away bias, (ii) bias towards individual players or teams, and, (iii) racial bias. For our study, we use play-by-play data and data from the Last Two Minutes reports the league office releases for games that were within 5 points in the last 2 minutes since the 2015 season. Our results indicate that the there is a bias towards the home team - particularly pronounced during the playoffs - but it has been reduced since the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, there is robust statistical evidence that specific players benefit from referee decisions more than expected from pure chance. However, we find no evidence of negative bias towards individual players, or towards specific teams. Finally, our analysis on racial bias indicates the absence of any bias.