April 16, 2012; New Orleans, LA, USA; NBA commissioner David Stern announces that the NBA has awarded the 2014 NBA All-Star game to the city of New Orleans during a press conference at the New Orleans Arena. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE

Commissioner Stern wants you to know that the fix is decidedly not in.

He went to risky lengths to make that point this week, bringing up a standard rhetorical device — “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” — as an example of a no-win, catch-22 question.  Say “yes”, and you’ve admitted to beating your wife in the past.  Say “no”, and you’re still beating her.  The problem, of course, is that bringing up spousal abuse in any context –even if it is a textbook example — is a no-win proposition in its own right.

But in one respect, Mr. Stern is right.  The lottery was not rigged.  There were too many people on had to witness the drawing, the codes were set ahead of time, and the lottery process of selecting four separate balls is one that is too difficult to manipulate.

Conspiracy lovers still believe in the lottery fix, and there is not much that the commissioner can do, save for a television segment showing the balls being drawn in front of a live audience.  (I like to imagine the Commish proving that the balls are not weighted by using a delightful upward pitch a la LeBron’s chalk toss.)

But the real problem has little to do with lotteries, frozen envelopes, or ping-pong balls.  The true conundrum is Tim Donaghy.

Ever since the 2007 scandal, rightly or wrongly, NBA conspiracists have had reasonable fodder with which to work.  Their claims are further bolstered by suspicions based upon referee assignments, most notably in the playoffs.  This year has been no exception.

In Game 1 of the Spurs-Thunder series, San Antonio was riding an 18-game winning streak, but had sat out a week waiting for the next series to start.  If there was a moment of vulnerability for the Spurs at home up to that point in the playoffs, then this game was it.  Which referee showed up to lead the crew? Joey Crawford, whose history with the Spurs is shaky at best.

In Game 6 of the Celtics-Heat series, the Celtics went home to Boston to close out the team that is arguably the league’s biggest eyeball draw.  Which referee got the game?  Dan Crawford. Uh-oh.

The numbers connecting Dan Crawford and the Heat are staggering.

In the nine postseasons since 2004 (the “Dwyane Wade era”), the Heat are 13-3 in playoff games reffed by Dan Crawford and 48-40 in all other playoff games in that span. 

Even adjusting the numbers for point spreads yields results that are statistically significant.

Adding up their point spread-based win probabilities across all 16 games, the Heat should have won about nine games on average. Even more, given the point-spread based probability of winning each game, the chance that Miami would go 13-3 or better in those 16 games is 1.9%. Statisticians generally use a cut-off of 5% or lower for statistical significance, so this would be indicative that this trend goes beyond what would be reasonable by random chance. 

Egad.  Those numbers came before Game 6, which the Heat won.  And Dan Crawford showed up again in Game 2 of the Finals, another must-win game for the Heat as they fought to avoid an 0-2 series deficit — meaning the Heat are now 15-3 in playoff games reffed by Dan Crawford in the D-Wade era.

15-3.

(If it helps you grasp the numbers, over an 82-game season, a 15-3 record would project to 68 wins — while playing exclusively against playoff teams.)

The solution is a little advance warning, some planning of the sort that would allay any qualms about situational referee selection.  If box scores and television screens are going to reveal referee assignments eventually, then the league may as well take the process one step further and announce each series’ referee assignments at the outset of the series.  By naming the officials ahead of time, the conspiracy theorists who want to shoot holes in the NBA’s credibility will have one less source of ammunition.

The drawbacks are minimal.  The league would have to tip its hand to the point that they would reveal the selection of referees for games which may not end up being played, but beyond that, they would only be publishing information a week or so ahead of time.

It’s a small price to pay for credibility.

Clad in a sweater and open-collar shirt and sporting a well-weathered countenance, Stern announced at the press gathering,

We have reached a tentative understanding that is subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations, but we are optimistic that that will all come to pass and that the NBA season will begin December 25 / Christmas Day with a tripleheader. But I won’t give you the details to tune in yet. We are very pleased that we have come this far.  There is a lot of work left to be done… We are optimistic that it will hold and that there will be an NBA season.

The work that remains includes getting a simple majority of the 30 teams and the 400-something players to agree upon the deal.  The framework of the deal includes a 50/50 split of basketball revenue, though it is technically a split that lies in a band between 49 and 51 percent.  The deal is slated to last 10 years, though each side will have the option of end the deal upon completion of the sixth year.

Over the next week, players will need to re-form their union before ratifying the agreement, but in the meantime, the lawyers from both sides are expected to hammer out the details and teams can begin the process of planning the short-term schedules necessary to have their squads ready in a month’s time.

According to Steve Aschburner of NBA.com, the two sides were finally able to agree upon the A-list issues that had plagued them throughout the 149-day lockout.  According to Aschburner, the compromises include:  (more…)