I haven’t really followed it, but my impression is that in recent years MLB has gotten moderately serious about improving this, and seems to have done a good job of using technology to make the strike zone more consistent between different Umpires and improve each Umpire’s accuracy (while keeping the principle that the Umpire makes each call themself in real time).
I agree that the rise of sixty angles super-slo-mo replay has made referees in all sports appear worse. But if you need super-slo-mo replay to see which way a call should have gone, you can’t say the referee did a bad job. You probably also can’t say that the call was cosmically unjust, since the difference between being a couple millimeters in-bounds and a couple millimeters out of bounds is basically random chance anyway.
My name is Just Asking Questions, but I am not a CTer.
Except…
I think that NBA refs are totally biased, even more than some posters above.
They are biased so much that I think the NBA isn’t even a sport any longer. I think it is “sports entertainment”, like Professional Wrestling. The general outcomes are predetermined. Certain teams are designated winners, some teams are the designated losers, and the rest are just placeholders. And the refs guide the games to the desired outcome, without the players being aware. (Naturally, they still have to make their shots. You can get “undesired” outcomes this way, but in general it balances out).
It only works in basketball, where the refs totally can control the game. It doesn’t work in the NFL, because a whole game’s worth of bad calls can be undone by one good TD play. The only things the umps control in MLB is the strike zone. The game is much more in the hands of the players. But an NBA game’s tone can be set by the number and type of fouls called, and of course, by the non-calls.
I am a sports fan, principally baseball. I do not believe that referees are, as a rule, as impartial as they can be, but I also do not believe that their biases are typically intentional, in the sense of consciously trying to nudge the game toward a particular-winner outcome.
The most important referee biases: in favor of players with reputations for great skill; and, against “influencing the game,” especially late, as has been described.
No one thinks cheating is a good thing, and no one wants more of it. Well, maybe Pats fans. But, in general, fans hate excessive game stoppages. Since fouls in sports like hockey, football, soccer, and basketball tend to be judgment calls like “was this contact sufficient to alter the outcome of the play?”, leagues try to thread a needle of making sure egregious violations are punished without slowing down the game too much. Leagues, believing it’s what fans want, have generally instructed their officials to bias more towards keeping the game moving in the late minutes.
I’m a sports fan, and I think referees sometimes deliberately sway the outcomes of games. But it could be homerism on my part saying that, I’ll admit: I call bullshit on Larry Johnson’s phantom four-point play against the Pacers in the 1999 Eastern Conference Finals, and on Kordell Stewart’s touchdown reception in the AFC Championship Game.
NBA refs have even more difficulty with being unbiased because it is one of the few/only major sports where constant intentional fouling by players is also going on as a tactic. It must be tough to walk the tightrope of 'hack-a-shaq" fouling and deliberate fouling to stop the clock while supposedly also trying to control legitimate fouling.
Unfortunately, elbows, falls, and physicality is what NBA fans pay for, so I’m sure NBA refs are pressured to deliberately balance the rulebook with intentionally crafted drama.
I agree that basketball is the easiest sport to influence via officiating and, therefore, at times the most frustrating to watch. The first month or so of college basketball is unbearable. Refs are instructed to call ticky tack fouls, but once conference play starts that usually goes out the window in favor of the “let 'em play” attitude.
I don’t think that’s a deliberate attempt to sway gam outcomes, it’s just an officiating trend that occurs. And although bad officiating can kill a basketball game, I don’t think it’s done with malicious intent.
I’ve seen a lot of boxing and a fair amount of MMA and I can only recall one clear cut case of partiality by a referee. Now judges are another story altogether, crooked as the day is long.
Bad calls and incompetence certainly affects ring referees the same way it does to the officials in every sport.