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Always Bet On … White?Will the Lakers benefit from racial discrimination in the NBA Finals?

By Daniel Engber
Posted Thursday, June 5, 2008, at 11:33 AM ET
Pau Gasol of the Los Angeles. Click image to expand.

The Boston Celtics are expected to win Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, which certainly makes sense if you look at the numbers. The Celts finished the season nine games ahead of Los Angeles. Their scoring differential was by far the best in league, a full 40 percent better than the Lakers. And the majority of the championship series are scheduled to be played in Boston, where the home team has won 10 of 11 throughout the playoffs. But Game 1 notwithstanding, the bookies in Vegas are reportedly favoring the Lakers to win it all. What are they thinking?

I hope they're not relying on the superiority of the Western Conference: This season's Celtics were even stronger against the West than they were in their own conference, at one point racking up 16 wins in a row against the Pacific Coast juggernauts. It would be just as ill-advised to play up the "playoff experience" of Lakers' coach and basketball Buddhist Phil Jackson. (As I recall, Gregg Popovich has also had some modest success in the postseason.) No, I'm guessing the oddsmakers have keyed in on something else about the 2007-08 Los Angeles Lakers … something that might give them an edge in a close series against a more skilled opponent. Maybe they've noticed that the Lakers are a very, very white team.

There's reason to believe that fair skin gives you an advantage in the NBA. Last spring, economists Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers published a careful analysis (PDF) of league statistics and found evidence of racial bias among the referees. According to their research, the numbers of fouls called against white and black players varied depending on the race of the referees for that game—when there were more white officials on the floor, fewer fouls were called against white players. And since the majority of the league's referees are white, this puts minority players at a disadvantage. (To be exact, the data showed only a relative effect—so it's impossible to know which direction the bias went. White refs may favor white players, or they may discriminate against blacks. Or, black refs could just as well be favoring black players or discriminating against whites.)

The commissioner's office denounced the findings, but the data it offered as a counterpoint turned out to be unconvincing. Then, last month, Price and Wolfers dropped another bombshell on the league. By comparing their previous data with Vegas betting lines, the economists tried to show that a betting strategy based on referee bias would systematically beat the spread (PDF). They found that having one additional white player on the floor could make a difference of half a point in a game's outcome, given a majority-white crew of referees. Their data also indicate that betting lines have tended to underrate teams with more white players. Have the bookmakers in Vegas finally wised up?

Take a look at the rosters for the NBA Finals. Just two players on the Celtics are white—Scot Pollard and Brian Scalabrine—and neither one has so much as set foot on the hardwood during this year's playoffs. Meanwhile, the Lakers have two white players in their starting lineup, Pau Gasol and Vladimir Radmanovic, plus two more who get significant time in the rotation, Sasha Vujacic and Luke Walton. They've got a pair of white bench-warmers in Coby Karl and Chris Mihm and a regular player in the light-skinned, Jewish point guard Jordan Farmar. In other words, the Lakers are at least three times whiter than the Celtics.

Of course, it's hard to figure out what effect this will have on the officiating in the finals. For one thing, we don't even know yet which referees will be calling the games. What's more, Price and Wolfers teased out a tiny racial-bias effect in the NBA by sorting through a mountain of data—every single box score from 12 years of regular-season games. That needle-in-a-haystack approach has its pitfalls, since a failure to correct for a single variable can make a bit of random variation seem like something important.

Last December's study (PDF) of racial bias among umpires in Major League Baseball may have suffered from exactly that problem. A team led by economist Daniel Hamermesh looked at ball-and-strike data from more than 2 million pitches across three seasons and evaluated whether white umpires were more likely to make judgments in favor of a white pitcher. The study found that there was indeed an "own-race" effect when it came to called strikes and that the bias disappeared when umpires knew they were being monitored by the "QuesTec" computer system for determining balls and strikes. In other words, the umpires were biased when they knew they could get away with it.

But subsequent investigations by other researchers—notably Phil Birnbaum of the blog Sabermetric Research—revealed some flaws in the analysis. The Hamermesh team didn't properly account for every variable, like the score in the game or the time of day. (Pitchers tend to throw more strikes when there's a lopsided score, and umpires may make their calls differently in natural versus artificial light.) If there's any bias at all, Birnbaum concluded, it's probably that minority umpires favor their own. And the effect shown in the paper might be the work of one bad apple, as opposed to rampant racism throughout the league. But even if you take the paper's central finding at face value, the effect would be so minuscule that only one or two pitches would be affected per year for each pitcher.

Stat-heads haven't made as much of an effort to debunk the original Price and Wolfers study, but Birnbaum has cast serious doubts on the betting-line follow-up. (The results, he argues, may have more to do with the fact that white players are underrated than with racial discrimination by referees.) Still, there's some reason to believe that there's more racial bias in basketball than in baseball. Wage-discrimination studies found that salaries for white NBA players in the 1980s were 20 percent higher than they were for black counterparts with similar stats. They may have been worth the extra money: Each additional white player on a team also seemed to account for a paid-attendance boost of 13,000 fans per season.

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Daniel Engber is an associate editor at Slate. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Pau Gasol by Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Why on earth would Vegas bet on the Lakers, you ask?

1) LA is better in the interior with the addition of Paul Gasol, thus making their perimeter shooting more effective, thus making them more dangerous offensively. They could be ranked amongst the top 5 teams of all time.

2) LA knocked off the defending champs in five games, making the Spurs look as though they didn't even have their starters on the floor most of the time.

3) Oh, here's the big one ... Boston played two seven game series and a 6 game series, and looked as though they were truly struggling at times. LA played a 4 game series, a 6 game series, and a 5 game series. The team to play a shorter number of games in the playoffs almost always wins the finals.

4) Kobe's won championships. Fisher has won championships. Phil Jackson? Won championships. The Celts? Well, I guess Sam Cassell has, but considering he's been riding the pine a lot of late, I'm not sure that counts for much. Vegas bets on history and experience, not intangibles.

Personally, I'm rooting for the Celts, but they've definitely got their hands full.

--morbo the great

(To reply, click here.)

Having lived in Vegas and known people in the Sports Books, I thought I'd take a moment to explain how the odds are set. It has nothing at all to do with who the oddsmaker thinks will win the game or a series. It's a function of how they expect the initial bets will be made Then if too much money is being bet on one team, the odds will change to make the other team a "better" bet. Over time the odds will change to reflect the betting trends you can watch this by noting what the odds are for say..the Celtics to win in 7, and then go back and check it at a later. The goal of the bookmaker is to get the monies split as close to 50/50 as possible, with the book making their money off the fee they charge, and in essence the betters just swapping money. The Lakers may be "favored" right now (which means the oddsmakers expect more money to be initially bet for the Celtics to win), but if the Celtics win the first two games, that will change for any new betters.

--damon2

(To reply, click here.)

It's logical that in a "one-and-done" playoff format, like NFL playoffs, the refs can have a big impact by butting their ugly heads into the game instead of letting the players decide the outcome. However, in a 7 game format, cannot think of a professional sports team that can rightfully say the refs cost them the series. Refs will always call a bad game, but that's the beauty of having to win four times against your opponent: Bad calls, plays, days, etc. even out, white or black. The best team wins. And if the two teams are so closely matched one cries foul in the seventh game, they should have gotten it done in six.

--jessecrismanassa

(To reply, click here.)

Gasol isn't only white. He's also a really good player. He's a post player who can pass really well on a team with the best cutter in the world. The Celts beat the Lakers during the reg. season but that was before they got Gasol. It's going to be close but I'd say advantage Lakers-white, black not withstanding. The article doesn't mention how many points this supposed bias is supposed to account for. Jordan was pretty dark and he got calls if anyone breathed on him. There are so many factors in a basketball game-it's part of what makes it Fantastic!-I really don't think the racial bias of the ref's counts much especially in games where most of the shots are taken by black guys anyway. Did brent Barry get the "benefit" of being white at the end of the last LA San Anton match up?

--TripleJ

(To reply, click here.)

The Mavericks and Heat teams of 2005-06 had the same amount of white players, but a large difference in the prominence of those players. Both teams had three white fellas, but the Mavericks of 2006 were seen as a very white team. Led by ubermensch Dirk Nowitzki, clearly the highest profile player on the team, the Mavericks also frequently used Keith Van Horn, as well as "light-skinned" Devin Harris and Doug Christie. The Heat, led by Dwayne Wade, the unduly anointed future of the NBA, only used Jason Williams on a regular basis, and had Jason Kopono occasionally off the bench. Although the ball was more often in white hands for the Mavericks, they seemed to get far less calls from the referees, the most notable, in Game 5, came against Nowitzki, himself – though the foul, if it did happen, likely should have been called on the "light-skinned" Devin Harris. I think the real, and undeniable, bias in the NBA is for superstars, for sneaker promoters, and Gatorade hawkers, and salesmen. All "superstars," regardless of race, get favorable calls, but, when it comes down to it, the bigger, more productive stars get the more beneficial calls. Let's be honest, not many people will buy shoes worn by Dirk Nowitzki, but people may buy shoes, shirts, sports drinks, phones, hats, watches, and The NBA from Dwayne Wade, or Kobe, or KG. Race is a factor is everything in America, but profile, and prominence, marketability and notability, are the dirty little influences of the league and its officials. Nash and Nowitzki won MVPs, and the league lost money, so it could be awhile until Shaq or Kobe, Price or Wolfers have as much reason to decry the "blatant" Caucasian bias of the NBA.

--Eagle2HB

(To reply, click here.)

(6/5)

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