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Revisiting Racial Bias in NBA Refereeing: First So Back, Then So Over

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  • Pipke, David

Abstract

Influential studies by Price and Wolfers (2010) and Pope et al. (2018) document racial bias among NBA referees and suggest that heightened awareness can reduce it. Using an independently assembled player–game dataset for 1988–2025 that links box scores to referee crews, I replicate the original findings and extend them. Racial bias is present in 1988–2007 and largely absent in 2007–2014, reemerges in 2015–2019, and disappears again from 2020 onward. Merging games to county–day measures of Black Lives Matter protest activity, I find lower bias when local protest intensity is higher. These associations are consistent with awareness-driven reductions in discrimination.

Suggested Citation

  • Pipke, David, 2025. "Revisiting Racial Bias in NBA Refereeing: First So Back, Then So Over," SocArXiv yg6ap_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:yg6ap_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/yg6ap_v1
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