That Nefarious NBA

There's been a little bit of an issue out of the NBA this week. A dual-jointed statistically backed college essay came out basically saying that white referees were calling the game unevenly depending on the race of said refs. If, say, the crew was all white, they tended to call more fouls. If the crew was all black, they called less fouls. This hints that the white refs (who are judging a league that is over 80% black) are being racists towards the black players they are judging. An interesting concept, to be sure. And not, as some of the talking heads on ESPN are yelling (they've become the Fox News of sports coverage) something to brushed aside easily and laughably. The NBA reeks of racism around every corner. But all I'll say about it pertains to this quote from the New York Times on a ratio that these writers (who are scientists and statistical mathematicians) believe they see in the data:

"Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on."

Sorry fella's, you just lost your creditability…