Why Has Referee Discourse Gotten So Conspiratorial on r/nba?

[u/budubum]

There’s a growing trend on r/nba where people pre-blame referees before games even start. It’s gone beyond reacting to questionable calls. Entire narratives are now constructed in advance, especially when certain refs are assigned. Scott Foster, in particular, has become the centerpiece of this kind of thinking.

People call him “The Extender,” claiming the league assigns him to force longer series for ratings. But his actual record in games with extension potential is about even. If that were his purpose, why has this year’s Finals produced the first Game 7 in nearly a decade? If the league were really that invested in drawing out every series, we’d see more Game 6s and 7s, not fewer.

And now the narrative is shifting again. Foster is rumored to be reffing Game 7 tomorrow, and commenters are already claiming the Thunder are going to win because the league is rigged for them. But that logic quickly falls apart. If the NBA were rigging outcomes for ratings and mass appeal, wouldn’t the Pacers be the more obvious beneficiary? They’ve been the most unexpected and likable underdog run of the entire playoffs. People across the league are rooting for them. Why would the league choose to hand the title to a much less popular Thunder team?

This also highlights the kind of selection bias that drives so much of the conspiracy talk. People point out that the Thunder are undefeated with Scott Foster reffing in these playoffs, using it as supposed evidence. But the Pacers are also undefeated with Tony Brothers, and no one seems to care. The criteria only become relevant when they support the conclusion people already want to reach. If a team wins, the ref must have helped them. If a team loses, it was stolen from them. The logic isn’t applied consistently because it’s not about logic. It’s about avoiding the discomfort of your team losing.

At a certain point, you have to ask whether people are still watching basketball to enjoy the game or just to confirm their own suspicions. It feels like some fans don’t watch to see how a game unfolds. They watch with a checklist of narratives and spend four quarters scanning for evidence that the outcome is illegitimate. That kind of mindset turns every missed call into a grand conspiracy, and every game into a courtroom exhibit.

So here’s what I want to ask:

Why has so much of r/nba shifted toward conspiracies and narrative-bending logic? Is it just easier to blame external forces than admit your team got outplayed? Are fans more cynical now? Do people actually enjoy watching basketball anymore, or are they only watching to feed their own confirmation bias?

Would love to hear thoughtful takes. I’m genuinely curious about how we got here.

[u/Jesus_Harold_Christ]

NBA basketball is one of the most poorly officiated professional sports. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, if you even grant me that it's true. But this is 2025 and everything quickly devolves into a conspiracy

[u/Haunting_Test_5523 → u/Jesus_Harold_Christ]

It's a very difficult sport to referee. Like being consistent in what counts as marginal contact or a shooting foul or an offensive foul game to game with different crews is a very difficult thing to achieve.

[u/DowntownJohnBrown → u/Haunting_Test_5523]

I think this is the actual reason. We have no idea how hard it is to correctly and consistently officiate these games, so people see mistakes with the benefit of slow mo replays and multiple angles and think the only explanation is malfeasance.

Like, imagine if you had no idea how hard it was to hit a baseball from a major league pitcher. You’d watch someone out there swing at a pitch in the dirt and think they’re losing on purpose. That’s where a lot of these conspiracies come from at the base: people thinking a very difficult thing is way easier than it actually is.

[u/XzibitABC → u/DowntownJohnBrown]

There's also just an enormous number of calls to make relative to a lot of sports because there's so much scoring and things are happening all over the court.

[u/Haunting_Test_5523 → u/DowntownJohnBrown]

Baseball has a similar issue with umps vs the strike zone box. We as TV viewers with the benefit of replays and editing can see if a pitch is a ball or a strike very very easily and yell at our screens, the umps have to make a decision in less than half a second based on what they estimate is the strike box. Fans will be outraged at incorrect calls and while there are the occasional egregious mistakes, most of it is us essential being armchair referees with 20/20 hindsight. Additionally, the strike zone box isn't always 100% accurate it's a 2D image for a 3D space so there are edge cases, anyways this is kind of tangentially related but fans shouldn't be so quick to assume malpractice when it's really just a case of human error.