Last night I was fuming mad at the calls in the Hornets-Lakers game. I thought the refs blew not just particular calls, but that their entire method to calling the game was flawed. Now before we go any further, I want to make it clear that the Lakers beat us. End of story. I’m not blaming the refs for the loss. But it occurred to me that it’s something I’ve seen before and just never knew how to describe it. Now I think I can.
There’s something called the Coase Theorem. It’s a theory that describes the efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. This 1937 theory finally won the Nobel prize in 1991, and has a variety of applications, such as when Judge Learned Hand now-famously applied it to American tort law (e.g., negligence, personal injury, etc.). Basic tort law says that when someone is harmed, someone is the cause of that harm, and whosoever caused that harm must then make restitution for the aforementioned harm. Judge hand resolved this theory to the formula of B < PL, where B = the burden of adequate protection against foreseeable damages, P = the probability of damage occurring and L = the gravity of the resulting loss. The practical application of this formula, then, was to suggest to a company that if the cost of taking certain precautions was less than result of probability times the loss that might be incurred, the company was better off to settle out of court or pay the cost of lawsuits rather than to incur the cost of taking the precaution (think of the Edward Norton's auto recall example from Fight Club). The problem with this application to tort law came when certain scholars, like Richard Posner, believed that if a company made the “right” economic choice of not taking the precaution, then they were not even negligent for the harm that ensued. Yet the flaw in this interpretation was that the formula took into account the fact that the company would be held negligent. Thus, to not find that company negligent was rewarding them unjustly for making their products more dangerous to reap greater profits. You can see the controversy this caused.
Okay, you’re asking me. How the hell does this relate to basketball, let alone the call scheme of referees? Simple. Teams like the Lakers last night, like the Celtics last year, and the Spurs or Pistons since, well, ever employ stifling, in-your-face defense. They gameplan on trying to frustrate opposing players by getting in their grill, playing press defense, and making as much physical contact as the rules allow. Defense wins championships, right? Only there’s one problem, this maxim, as well as the maxim that basketball is a “contact sport,” equate physical contact as the norm, and the very reputation of being “tough” defensively means that refs expect that team to give the other team fits. As a consequence, the refs have little sympathy for the harshly defended player, because they believe that they can’t “take the game into their hands” and bail out that player when the other team is just defending well. Okay, you’re still saying, what’s the problem, right?
Well here’s the thing, when you play that kind of defense, when you are pressing, when you are swiping at the ball, when you are pressing bodies tight all night, you’re playing in a defensive gray zone: you’re trying to make as much contact possible without fouling. But by the very philosophy of such play, by the very proximity, you are bound to commit fouls. Just like CP gets burnt every now and then going for steals, so will any uber-physical defender eventually, and inevitably, commit a foul. This isn’t a game of perfection, but of percentages; you just can’t play that close and never foul. So s the problem is that the refs are afraid to make the call against these types of defenders, because they just assume they’re playing tough defense. It’s as if they are agreeing with Coase or Posner and saying that just because such teams figured out that the potential burden imposed by increased fouls is less than the probability of enough fouls to cost your team, THEY SHOULDN’T BE WHISTLED FOR FOULS THAT ARE FOULS, because they made the correct strategic choice.
I call bullshit. A foul is a foul. Whether’s it’s CP, Kobe, Chris Mihm, or Ryan Bowen. A hack is a hack. Whether you’re Bruce Bowen, Chauncey Billups, Allen Iverson, or Ricky Davis. A block is a block. Your superstar status shouldn’t matter. Your efficacy as a defensive unit shouldn’t matter. The best teams don’t foul because they don’t commit fouls, not because they play tough and are expected not to foul.
What really creates problems with execution of this Coase Corollary in NBA refereeing is the disparity it creates when one team is renowned for their defense and the other is not. So far this year, the Lakers’ defense had been lauded. The Hornets, not so much. So you get the problem where you get the Hornets getting signaled for regular fouls, which they, like any team, commit. But then, on the other end, you get a team getting away with fouls because B < PL, that is, they are a good defensive team, so we won’t reward the other team with fouls for not beating that defense themselves. Yet this creates an unbalanced game, where the referees are calling fouls on one team that they’re not calling on the other. The problem is compounded even more if one of the teams is known to pick up offensive fouls, which the Hornets are, and then you get the “defensive” team receiving the benefit of “offensive fouls” that aren’t there because their reputation as defenders says that otherwise the offensive player just couldn’t have made that move against such a tough defense without fouling.
So to sum up, what I’m saying is that tough defensive teams are allowed to get away with too many fouls based solely on their strategic choice to engage in aggressive defense and the perception of them as being good at doing so. As a result, their opponents face an unfair bias in how the games are called. Ever wonder why all the run and gun teams have trouble winning close games? It’s because all those “defense wins championship” teams foul them and never get called on it. Well, I’m calling you on it. Here. Now.
