NBA Refs Burn Crosses

In white robes.

That's the implication of a new study finding that black players get called for fouls more often when refed by an all white crew in the NBA.

“Across all of these specifications,” they write, “we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three.”

Jokes and the obligatory questioning of why everything in sports must be tied to race (which, seriously, I'm at the point of just having only blacks play/coach/own/ref/cheerlead/waterboy/commentary to avoid this idiocy.) aside, I'd like to point out that the study doesn't seem to question if black players tend to play a bit more aggressively than white players. Which, I mean, duh.

The money quote..

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. 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, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.

“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.