SSAC27 — Paper 1
Individual NBA Referees Have Systematically Different Effects on Free Throw Rates
Timeline
- Abstract deadline: October 1, 2026
- Full paper deadline: December 4, 2026
Abstract
Adapted from the submission draft, which uses "we" per conference convention. The site uses "I" because it's just me.
NBA officiating is analyzed almost exclusively at the crew level. I parse the calling official from the description field of play-by-play data for 13,278 games (2014–25), construct per-official shooting foul profiles for 101 officials, and measure defense-adjusted FTA/36 deltas for 40 high-FTA players across 3,846 player-official pairs.
Individual officials produce significant heterogeneity (ANOVA p = 3e-6). The 80th-percentile spread is 0.86 FTA/36, about a free throw per game for a starter. Player-specific crew suppression scores predict playoff FTA deviation (Spearman r = 0.406, p < 0.001). Counterintuitively, top FTA amplifiers like Bill Spooner call fewer total shooting fouls than average, the effect is player-specific, not volumetric. However, the large FTA collapses in playoff floor games (mean −2.889 FTA/36) are not crew-driven (p = 0.764). The complete dataset is published open regardless of conference outcome.
Figures
