I haven't visited the other 2 threads in a long time, but saw this and thought it deserved reasonable discussion by people of reasonable minds.
This is not conclusive by any means, but certainly does beg for more analysis. Emphasis added below.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...ll4&refer=home
"Later in the series, a home victory might be necessary for the games to be extended. In that case, the officiating bias might be greater. . . . In the seventh game, the bias might disappear, as it no longer would serve any purpose. The series will end no matter what.
First let's look at Game 5. In the 2007 and 2008 playoffs, 25 series extended to at least five games. At times when the home team was leading three games to one, and another win meant the end of the series,
the visiting team shot 1.1 percentage points better than the home team. When a home-team win doesn't end the series, the home team's field-goal percentage is 5.4 points higher on average than the away team's.
Let's turn to Game 6: In the 2007 and 2008 playoffs, in games where the home team was behind in the series, it was called for 4.1 fewer fouls on average than the away team.
In the seventh game the foul differential drops to just one during the past two years. That's little more than the regular season average. All the data suggest there have been movements in the number of calls that are consistent with the suspicion that the NBA sought to extend series.
To be sure, such statistics prove nothing, since they are based on small samples. Yet the home bias in the playoffs, and the way in which it seems to change as a series progresses, is troubling, and worthy of further inquiry."