Reviewing the calls: Lakers-Kings Game 6

There's been a lot of talk about this next game... maybe way too much talk.

A couple of years back I did an extensive breakdown of the referee calls in Mavs-Heat game five of the NBA Finals. Along with being a popular article, it led to frequent emails requesting I review other specific games in a similar fashion, notably the "infamous" game six of the 2001-2002 playoffs between the Lakers and the Kings.

Now though the stakes are different -- the NBA's had to deal with a full blown ref scandal, and the original bad seed Tim Donaghy isn't done yet. Not content with pleading guilty to betting on games he officiated, he recently alleged that the NBA had two "company men" work the Lakers-Kings game and make calls that would help the Lakers win and set up a Game 7.

Lakers-Kings game six refs

			David Stern had this to say: "You can watch it, you can look at it again, and you could see what we call the correct, incorrect and noncall incorrect. … My guess is it won't be pretty, but it won't be dishonest and it won't be illegal. Of that I assure you." All right David, I'm game. Let's go to the videotape.
Dick Bavetta #27	Bob Delaney #26	Ted Bernhardt #16

First up, let's set some ground rules we can all agree on:
1) Basketball is a very difficult game to officiate
- ten players moving simulataneously with all kinds of incidental contact along the way, a variety of obscure and seldom enforced rules, and it's all played out from end to end at blazing fast speed.
- you are always going to have a certain amount of controversy regarding the officiating since there are so many plays which are far from clear-cut. This isn't tennis, with a simple in/out decision.
- reasonable individuals can agree to disagree on the appropriate ruling on a play, even after seeing it in slow motion replay multiple times! It's clear then that referees should be extended a margin of error and an occasional missed call is no grounds for assuming malfeasance.

2) the conclusions of my review can easily be challenged
- my qualifications are suspect: I've never been a basketball ref at any level. I have however watched thousands of NBA games, large parts of them in slow motion, and have a decent sense of the 'standards' applied to the game today.
- For this game I'm working from pretty grainy videotape transferred to DVD, which doesn't always lend clarity to the pulled back TV angles commonly used. Most egregious to this is that at times it was hard to distinguish between two of the refs (Delaney and Bernhardt)

3) backdrop to game six
- the Kings were ahead three games to two in the series after a thrilling game five win
- in game five the Lakers felt the calls were against them, highlighted by Shaq only attempting one free throw in the game (and fouling out) while the Kings took ten more free throws as a team. This may have influenced the buildup to game six with a sense that Shaq would be accorded 'better treatment.'

4) what this is not
- this is not intended as a referendum on NBA rules in general (ie whether games should be called tighter, etc)
- it is not a defense/attack on specific players and their games, eg some people argue Shaq has got away with commmitting near constant offensive fouls throughout his career, but I was only reviewing the game under the guise of the typical standards of officiating
- I had no agenda for the data to convey evidence one way or another

5) my approach to Ref grading
I reviewed the complete game, noting:

• which official made the call (not always easy to tell) or had primary view on a non-call
• whether a call/non-call was in my view the "right call" using the following categorizations:
     YES - the right call
     PROBABLY - seems like the right call, but may have less than optimal camera angles to tell
     MAYBE - more of a 50/50 situation where the call could reasonably have gone either way
     DUBIOUS - appears the call is wrong, albeit I have the benefit of slow motion replay!
     VERY DUBIOUS - to my mind the call is wrong
  
• which team the call favored
• and other notes, including the commentary by Marv Albert, Bill Walton, and Steve Jones who were broadcasting the game when appropriate

"Right Call" Stats

So after I grade every call (and "non-call") the obvious place to begin is by seeing what percentage of the time the officials' calls agreed with my view, and how often in the questionable calls each team got the benefit. It should be noted that having replays, slow motion, and the commentary of Marv, Bill, and Steve all give me advantages which the officials can't have. At the same time, camera angles are often poor, and I can't hear the conversations between players, coaches, and the refs.

Please Note: some calls I assigned as 'joint' to two refs, and in those cases the plays are "double counted" in the individual ref totals, but NOT in the ALL totals. Then a few non calls were charged only to the totals and not to one or two of the refs. (Intentional fouls are ignored.)

Official --	ALL			Bavetta			Delaney			Bernhardt
Right Call	Calls	Favor LAL	Favor SAC	Calls	Favor LAL	Favor SAC	Calls	Favor LAL	Favor SAC	Calls	Favor LAL	Favor SAC
Yes	45	18	27	18	7	11	15	8	7	12	3	9
Probably	35	20	15	8	7	1	13	6	7	12	7	5
Maybe	20	10	10	5	2	3	7	3	4	7	4	3
Dubious	8	7	1	4	4	0	2	1	1	2	2	0
V.Dubious	1	0	1				1	0	1
Totals	109	55	54	35	20	15	38	18	20	33	16	17

* Calls = calls and significant non-calls

I should offer the disclaimer that I was trying hard to be objective on rating the calls, and did use the opinions of the supposedly unbiased commentators in my evaluation. I should also state there may be times when I mistakenly attributed a call to Delaney that should have been Bernhardt, and vice versa, since I had difficulty telling them apart on occasion.

Ultimately, by my standards, 73% of the officials' decisions on calls and non-calls were either 'yes' or 'probably' the right call, and only nine plays (8% of all calls) were either 'dubious' or 'very dubious'. Now some calls to me are just flat out "maybe" calls by their nature regardless of who the ref is where it's basically a "can go either way" situation. Thus this number is not a focal point for me as to the quality of officiating.

The total calls (and non-calls) were actually very even between the two teams, but the Lakers did benefit in my view in having an edge on the dubious calls of 7-2 in their favor. Five calls though across a full game does not immediately suggest any foul play at work.

As for the specific officials, with again the caveat that I can't speak with total authority to the Delaney/Bernhardt splits being exact, no ref showed a particular overall bias in total calls (compared to say Salvatore's 25-11 in favor of Miami split in the prior exercise of this kind).

Official	Yes/Prob	Maybe/Dub.	M/D LAL%
Bavetta	74%	26%	67% (6-3)
Delaney	74%	26%	40% (4-6)
Bernhardt	73%	27%	67% (6-3)

There was one non-call I rated a "Maybe" and allocated to only the total rather than a specific ref, so the total "maybe/dubious" call sheet was 17-12 Lakers or 59% in their favor.

Of course, not all calls count for the same value (a change in possession call counts for much more than a personal foul leading to a sideout), so to make it more insightful it's worth attempting to calculate the potential points value of these calls.

Points impact of Officiating Calls

At face value, figuring what a call led to in scoring should be relatively simple -- a foul leading to free throws is the value of the points. However it's not really as straight forward as you might think. For example on a shooting foul with a missed shot, if the foul hadn't been called, there's still a chance the missed shot would have become an offensive rebound. Similarly with a personal foul leading to free throws, if the foul hadn't been whistled the team would have still had a normal possession to go in most cases.

So in viewing the plays I adjusted the points value by what I considered the "leftover value" of the possession if it hadn't happened, using for ease of calculation 1 point as the basic expectation of a possession. So, a travel call costs a team one point since they score 0 on the possession with an expectation of one if the call hadn't happened. On the other hand a personal foul that awards two free throws, both made, is only a +1 value despite the team scoring two points: if the foul doesn't happen we still expect on average a point from the possession.

Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there's some pretty debatable assumptions being made here. The final step is to multiply the presumed +/- points for a call by the "wrong call" chance, which I allocated as follows:

0% - 'yes' grade (has a 0% chance of being an incorrect call)
25% - 'probably'
50% - 'maybe'
75% - 'dubious'
85% - 'very dubious'

If the call was deemed a "yes" then the points adjustments are all considered to be fairly earned. On the other hand if you earn two free throws on a "maybe" call, the 50/50 category, then half the points for the call can be termed "bonus officiating points" for the team.

Official	LAL FT	SAC FT	LAL 'Bonus' Pts	SAC 'Bonus' Pts
Bavetta	15-17	10-10	+1.1	-3.3
Delaney	9-10	4-8	-1.8	-1.6
Bernhardt	5-7	3-5	-2.6	-4.5
Joint Calls	5-6*	1-2	-0.1	+0.0
Totals	34-40	18-25	-3.0	-9.0

* note the Lakers had six free throws as a result of intentional fouls.

To explain the 'negative bonus points' concept a touch more -- if for instance a player took a shot and was seemingly fouled but there was no call, that would be negative points on the call for his team since they lost free throws and 'expected value' resulting from them. As such you can see this game the calls actually may have hurt the offense and helped the defense overall.

So when I do this somewhat involved "quantification" of the officiating impact to generate team net 'bonus points' and add it all up, it looks like this:

+4.4 LAL - Bavetta
+1.9 LAL - Bernhardt
+0.2 SAC - Delaney
+0.1 SAC - Joint Calls
----------------------
+6.0 Lakers (total)

Now you can argue certainly that the types of calls an official is involved with in a given game is to some extent a function of what 'turf' on the court they are covering, and undoubtedly even if you had completely correct officials you could still see some odd discrepancies in free throws awarded and 'points generated/lost'.

At the end though, my scoring of the calls amounts to seeing the Lakers getting a net bonus of 6 points in the game, which some might take as a sign that the refs had a big role in determining the outcome of a contest with a four point final margin. Ah, but of course, if you change one call, the events that had ensued would be different. Perhaps if Divac had got the call and resulting free throws in the first quarter, the Kings would have wound up losing by even more. So we can never be sure, excepting perhaps the very last plays of a game, to what extent the calls mattered.

More Commentary & Analysis

Do I think the officiating hurt the Kings' chances of winning this game? Yes.
Do I think there was some nefarious scheme on the part of the refs to control the outcome? No.

Calls by Quarter

Quarter	LAL Ref Pts	SAC Ref Pts	Net
1st	-2.3	-0.7	Sac +1.6
2nd	-1.0	-2.4	LaL +1.4
3rd	-0.9	-2.7	LaL +1.8
4th	+1.2	-3.2	LaL +4.4

The game started off with some breaks overall for the Kings and was very even at the half. It tilted slightly to the Lakers in the third quarter, and then the fourth quarter was heavily in the Lakers favor based on my evaluations.

Still let's remember the accusation being made here -- not that there were some questionable calls that were imbalanced in the favor of one team (a frequent occurrence everyone can probably admit in basketball), but that two 'company men' refs conspired to ensure the Lakers won the game.

I haven't seen any reference to who specifically the 'company men' were in Donaghy's mind, but given my own stats it would be hard to make the case that Delaney was rigging it for the Lakers since his debatable calls were more often in favor of the Kings. So let's make the assumption that Bavetta and Bernhardt are the ones under scrutiny and yes they both had some calls that went for the Lakers.

But here's the thing, if you look at the last five minutes of the game during which it was always in a "clutch" state by the 82games standard filter (neither team ahead by more than five points) the calls don't add up to a pattern of bias to my mind:

4th Quarter Calls/Non-Calls in last five minutes

Time	Score	Play	Type	Right Call?	Ref	Pro	Comments	SAC Pts	LAL Pts
4:37	89-87 Lal	Divac fouled and makes the shot so and1 chance	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Sac	amazing pass by Webber
4:24	90-89 Sac	Shaq fouled by Webber on post move as CW doubles	Call	Yes	Bernhardt	Lal	replay Steve: Shaq spinning in and Webber does get him right on the noggin
3:56	90-90	Kobe shot blocked by Christie with no foul call with Kobe look to ref	No Call	Maybe	Bernhardt	Sac	hard to see on tv angle		-0.8
3:26	92-90 Sac	Late in Shot clock ball into paint to Shaq who goes up and Divac makes block from behind for jump ball call	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Sac	on replay Bill: that's a terrific play by Divac. Bad toss on jump ball by Bavetta helps Sacramento gain possession
3:06	92-90 Sac	Webber offensive foul…huge call as he makes the shot but wiped out. Horry moving on the play flops and gets the whistle although Webber leans in	Call	Maybe	Bernhardt	Lal	before replay Bill: and this is a terrible call. On seeing replay Bill: Webber has this all the way…look at his feet…on the outside of Robert Horry's	-1.3
2:58	92-90 Sac	Non call as Webber hits arm of Horry who loses control of ball	No Call	Wrong	Delaney	Sac	…but foul on Divac moments later so no cost to lal		0
2:56	92-90 Sac	Divac loose ball foul	Call	Yes	Delaney	Lal	Bill: Adelman is beyond belief here. Steve: but Horry was fouled on that play by Chris Webber (as replay shows) when he brings the ball across he rakes his arm
2:40	92-92	Christie pass deflected OB Kings retain possession	Call	Yes	Delaney?	Sac
2:34	92-92	Foul on Kobe as Bibby dribbles on switch. No FT but <4 secs left on shot clock at time of foul	Call	Yes	Bernhardt	Sac	on replay Steve: clearly a reach across
2:28	92-92	Webber missed fg airball while double teamed with no call with Horry defending and Kobe on double	No Call	Maybe	Bavetta	Lal	hard to see on tv but to miss so badly is suspicious and Webber looked to Bavetta for whistle	-0.6
2:16	92-92	O'Neal fouled on post entry pass by Funderburke	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Lal	bad position on call by Bavetta? But replay looks like there was sufficient contact for the call
2:06	93-92 Lal	Funderburke fouled by Shaq	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Sac	obvious call
1:54	94-93 Sac	Kobe drives to hoop along baseline and gets foul called on Christie with Webber coming over for block on help defense	Call	Prob	Bavetta	Lal	replay Bill: Bibby cannot believe it and falls to the ground saying what is happening here. Webber had a great block on the play. I'm not sure where the foul is other than Kobe jumping into defenders who are backing up. Steve: Christie opened up the baseline and now he's riding Kobe the entire way. Once Kobe goes in the air that call is not going in the favor of Christie.		0.5
1:37	95-94 Lal	Fox fouled on defensive rebound by Funderburke	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Lal	Obvious bad foul
1:27	97-94 Lal	Bibby fouled by Fisher	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Sac	Steve: an impossible cover for Derek Fisher. Caught reaching in (?) More body contact than arm contact to me.
1:15	97-96 Lal	Fox fouled by Turkoglu in paint with heavy contact	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Lal	Steve: he's reaching and trying to slap the ball away
0:52	99-98 Lal	Shaq makes basket with some minor contact by Webber with no call for the and1 option	No Call	Yes	Bernhardt	Sac
0:43	101-98 Lal	No call of foul when Bibby goes baseline for missed fg…MB wants call	No Call	Maybe	Delaney	Lal		-0.8
0:20	101-98 Lal	Blocking foul on Fox as Turkoglu moves in left corner	Call	Yes	Bavetta	Sac	Steve: Fox trying to get what he thought was going to be the game winning play but instead got the blocking foul
0:19	101-100 Lal	Intentional Foul on Kobe by Christie	Call	Intentional	All
0:12	103-102 Lal	Non call on forearm to chin by Kobe trying to break free of Bibby to catch inbounds pass	No Call	Maybe	All	Lal	Bibby also at fault for grabbing Kobe		0.5
0:11	103-102 Lal	Intentional Foul on Kobe by Christie	Call	Intentional	All
0:02	105-102 Lal	Intentional Foul on Horry by Turkoglu	Call	Intentional	All

Yes at a glance you can see the Lakers got some advantage from the calls down the stretch, but if Bavetta was really trying to rig the game, would he have called a tie up jump ball at the 3:26 mark (and subsequently had a bad toss that gave the ball to the Kings) with the Kings ahead by two when he could have called a foul on Divac? Would he have called the foul on Fisher at 1:27 that helped bring the Kings back within a point with plenty of time left? Would he have called the blocking foul on Fox with 0:20 when an offensive foul would have basically sealed the game? Doubtful.

Bernhardt made no foul call on Christie's block of Kobe with the game tied at 3:56, gave Bibby a bailout call with the shot clock winding down at 2:34 with the game tied, and didn't call Webber for a foul on Shaq's basket at 0:52 which could have fouled out C-Webb and given the Lakers a look at a four point lead.

Delaney wasn't very active in the waning minutes, with one no call where Bibby looked for a foul at the 0:43 mark. The other notable non-call which I rated an "all refs" situation was on the inbounds at 0:12 where Kobe knocked Bibby to the floor with an elbow to the face, but Bibby was also grabbing Kobe at the time it happened so both were really guilty of infractions to some extent. Still an offensive foul on Kobe there could have changed the outcome!

As a whole, these plays suggest to me the refs were calling the game honestly, if perhaps not well.

Now Bernhardt did have the arguable turning point call of the game as it turns out at the 3:06 mark when Webber moved into the paint and made a basket only to have the shot wiped out with an offensive foul call. At first I was in agreement with Bill Walton that this was a "terrible call" but having watched the play over ten times in slow motion I changed it from 'dubious' to 'maybe' in my grading since it's one of those plays where I believe a case could be made for a defensive foul, an offensive foul, or even a dual fault let them play no call. If pressed I'd still rate it a Horry foul which would have given a basket and the and one shot to Webber and the Kings a possible four or five point lead. Yet there is a fair amount of left arm push off from Webber and Bernhardt was right on top of the play with a good angle.

This gets to the heart of the matter to me: despite the NBA's official claim that 95% of calls are correct over a season, there are just too many plays that are far from being clear cut wrong/right and many that fall into a gray area where even watching a play many times in slow motion you can make a case for different verdicts. The block/charge/no call situation is also about the worst of these in that it's such a snap judgement with significant effect.

Counter Arguments

I don't see grounds to think there was a conspiracy at work here. Still let me be proactive in trying to address some of the likely counterpoints people may raise.

• Someone might argue that the refs weren't explicitly looking to fix a game, but to just give the benefit of the doubt to the Lakers where tough calls arose.
  That's a tougher argument to refute since the Lakers did indeed get the calls as a whole. The reality is the NBA features a pronounced home court advantage and while some of it may come from having the crowd on your side, knowing the arena, the comfort of staying at your home instead of a hotel, etc there's also likely a touch of ref favoritism to the home team without any malicious intent. As stated earlier, the Lakers had some likely gripes about the game five calls so it's probably fair to say over the seven game series that both teams were at times helped and hurt by the officiating. Maybe I need to look at game seven, game five, and game four, and...
• Come on! The Lakers took 40 free throws to 25 for the Kings!
  Yes that's true, but let's extract the six that came from intentional fouls so it's now 34 to 25. And having watched this game all the way through twice with many plays reviewed over and over, there was a clear difference in aggressiveness between the two teams. The Lakers were incessantly taking the ball into the paint and to the basket, while the Kings took more outside shots. That's not to say there weren't bad calls but the free throw discrepancy doesn't surprise me.
• What about star treatment from the refs?
  This is a fair criticism I believe. Guys like Scott Pollard and Lawrence Funderburke seemed to get away with a lot less jostling with Shaq in the paint than Vlade Divac did. There was some interesting dialogue on this point though from Steve Jones and Bill Walton who commented that part of Pollard's problem was sticking his arms up too soon. There was also a huge collision at one point between Medvedenko and a flopping Pollard with no call...neither player has enough status to get a call? One illegal screen call in the game, yup that was on Pollard. So I agree there does seem to be issues with different standards and allowances for different players.
• O'Neal has earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame, not on talent but on being so big that when he moves someone out of position, it's a foul on the defender's stomach and not on his forearm going into the defender's throat
  It's not the place of this article to really assess how refs have called Shaq's game through his career. I should point out though that in this game Shaq only had two dunks and the vast majority of his baskets were touch shots from 6-10 feet away. Yes he got to the line a lot, but he also had the ball a ton and had two guys draped over him most of the time. The other nice thing about Shaq is that he never seemed to complain to the ref himself, whereas Kobe, Bibby and others would look at the ref after almost every missed shot asking for a call.
• What's with your funky "points system"? Shaq goes to the line and sometimes it's a no cost call?
  We can debate the 'ref points' calculations but fundamentally I looked at the subsequent events, so if Shaq only made 1 of 2 free throws then it was pretty much a break even call since the average possession is worth (roughly) one point. Likewise there were a couple of plays where the Kings could justifiably have expected a foul called on the Lakers when the Kings missed a shot, but when the shooter grabbed the miss and put it right back up for a follow up basket I treated it as a zero cost "no call" since the Kings actually scored a basket on the full sequence rather than having to earn it at the line. Admittedly there was no consideration of foul trouble implications on the points values.
• Bavetta off the hook? Are you kidding me, four dubious calls and all in favor of the Lakers?
  Well Bavetta did have some bad calls in my view, but several of them were in part due to bad angles. In the first quarter there was a mysterious phantom and one call on Bibby on a Kobe shot where Bavetta was on the baseline and Kobe was at the free throw line with Bibby in front...so bad angle there. In the third quarter there was a horrible sequence for the Kings where Bibby was dribbling on the left side and Fisher hit his arm and then the ball with no call from Bavetta, but again Dick had a bad angle with Bibby in front of him so he may not have seen the hit on the arm, just the later contact by Fisher on the ball itself. Still this one hurt since it led to a Lakers fastbreak three-point play the other way. Bavetta's calls also did seem to tighten up in the fourth quarter...contact that he was letting go by without a whistle in the first three quarters suddenly seemed much more severe than contact getting whistles down the stretch. So a bad game for Bavetta? Yes. A rigged game? I don't think so.
• Face it, the NBA just wants the big time playoff matchups to go the distance
  Really? If so they do a lousy job of manipulating results! In the past ten seasons only one NBA final has gone seven games, and only four out of twenty conference finals have gone the distance. In other words, out of thirty key best of seven series, only five have maxed out the games. In contrast, eleven of those series didn't even reach a game six!
• Doesn't a game like this ruin the NBA?
  Hardly. This was flat out a fantastic game to watch, incredibly entertaining and the outcome was uncertain into the final seconds. Years later it still carries great watchability. In fact while I was conducting this to really examine the charges leveled against the refs by the "soon to be in jail" Donaghy, I couldn't help but take away some real positives --
  1. Chris Webber was a special player
     As one of the hall of fame types who never won a championship we may not give him full credit for his talents. Watch this game and you'll see him in a different light. If you think Steve Nash is the king of the out of nowehere pass, Webber made probably close to ten behind the back bounce passes in this game, many leading to easy baskets/open looks that were delivered right on the money. He also showed leadership throughout and hit some key shots at moments when the Kings started to struggle. Throw in some nice defensive moments, solid rebounding, and he was indeed a superstar.
  2. Shaq is much more than just a bulldozer
     It must be tiresome to the Diesel to be labeled as a guy who just bullied his way to success. This game displays a nice repertoire of Shaq's scoring moves, from hook shots, to soft banks off the glass, to 'nice footwork' fakes in the paint and more. He was a true workhorse throughout the game, carrying the Lakers on both ends most of the time. Yes he got to the line in this game, but what's forgotten is he made his first ten freebies and 13-17 all told.
  3. The Kings deserve Bill Simmons' Critically Acclaimed status
     Sacramento had a great team that easily could have won a championship with a little luck, or even one different call perhaps! Vlade and Webber were a potent big man duo, Turkoglu and Peja sharing the small forward spot. Bibby and Christie in the backcourt. Bobby Jackson off the bench...the lack of a title should not hold back praise for the great Kings' run under Adelman.
  4. Long live the Seven Game series
     While everyone can appreciate the excitement of a single elimination playoff structure (hasn't hurt the NFL or NCAA much has it), a game like this makes you relish the long series with its up and down momentum changes. Having watched game six, I'm ready to go track down a copy of game seven...

• Aren't you embarrassed to be an NBA apologist? How much is Stern paying you?
  I don't think David will be too happy with this article if he ever comes across it, since it's pretty clear the officiating was less than ideal. The truth is that with all the comments I've heard about this game through the years I probably expected the calls to be more biased to the Lakers. The Kings were testy almost from the get go in this one and were chirping at the refs from the first quarter on, but sometimes that kind of mindset works to be a self fulfilling prophecy. They were hurt badly by a few key calls, but had chances to win it nonetheless, and the game seven at home still to come. In the end I agree with Mr. Stern, it's not pretty, but it doesn't make me question the integrity of the game.
• You have no qualifications to do this, get a real ref to go through the game
  Yeah, I could debate that some, but I'll agree my lack of officiating experience is a flaw. Consequently I have recruited two supposedly impartial, intelligent people with ref backgrounds to go through the game as well and I'll follow up with another article when they get their scorecards in...

So that's my take on the officiating at the specific play level, but perhaps you saw it different? Send in your comments, including any disagreements with my judgement... How would you call it?

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