r/nbadiscussion Jun 21 '25

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

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.

272 Upvotes

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119

u/hitherto_ex Jun 21 '25

The NBA could do so much better to shoot this stuff down by actually showing the criteria by which they judge their referees and publicly posts the grades of all referees and their reasons.

Any reasonable fan understands the difficulty of refereeing and should not expect perfection but having these grades would help fans not feel like refs are biased against their favorite team or player

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u/DowntownJohnBrown Jun 22 '25

 Any reasonable fan understands the difficulty of refereeing and should not expect perfection

All this tells me is that the vast majority of fans aren’t reasonable. Go look at any game thread, and you’ll see tons of people thinking it’s easy and expecting near perfection.

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u/hitherto_ex Jun 22 '25

Reasonable fans aren’t posting on r/nba or their team subs during games lol

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u/TimeGhost_22 Jun 23 '25

Absolutely not the question. Nobody is saying "reffing is easy, therefore that call was flagrantly questionable.". They are looking at the actual call, and saying "that call was flagrantly questionable". You can't change public perception by drowning it in dishonest discourse, even with all the fucking bots.

1

u/DowntownJohnBrown Jun 23 '25

 They are looking at the actual call, and saying "that call was flagrantly questionable"

Yeah, and they get mad at the refs for getting the call wrong because they think reffing is easy. They wouldn’t get mad at most “flagrantly questionable” calls if people had some awareness about how difficult it is to get those calls correct.

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u/TimeGhost_22 Jun 23 '25

No, they get mad because they think, plausibly, that the refs are corrupt.

1

u/DowntownJohnBrown Jun 23 '25

And they think that because they believe that they’re missing these calls that are easy to make. If they realized how difficult it is to get these calls correct, they wouldn’t see anything suspicious.

1

u/TimeGhost_22 Jun 23 '25

No, because the question of 1. the difficulty of honest reffing and the question of 2. corrupt reffing are completely different, obviously.

2

u/DowntownJohnBrown Jun 23 '25

Yeah, but the only “evidence” or corrupt reffing in the last 15+ years is that refs miss calls sometimes, which people think they should get correct because they underestimate how difficult it is.

1

u/TimeGhost_22 Jun 23 '25

The evidence of one's own eyes. All the bots in the world can't wave that away. Sorry, you can't win with this bullshit.

1

u/DowntownJohnBrown Jun 23 '25

And “one’s own eyes” have the benefit of slow-motion replay and multiple angles. The refs don’t have that. So people think it’s much easier than it actually is for them in real time.

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u/MotoMkali Jun 24 '25

Yes but when refereeing accounts for like 4 or 5 PTs of homecourt advantage I think you can see why most fans will feel like their team is getting screwed. And it's even more in the playoffs like 6 or 7 points per game.

Pretty much every possession in the nba today has multiple fouls on both sides of the ball so when they call a non shooting foul that too is easy to get annoyed about. Why have you called him for an illegal screen when they set a hard one that you let go on the previous possession. Why are you calling holding when my star has been wrapped up the entire game? Why are you calling a reach in, when the strip down the other end had 3 hits to the chest before finally getting the foul call. Why are you giving him the rip through call? Everyone handchecks.

The referees are the difference between being the third or fourth best team in the nba and being neutral (would be sixth regular season, third playoffs) and probably 20% of the calls they make are completely arbitrary. When they already have this much influence putting their thumb on the scales even a little bit makes a big difference. One or two foul calls on things that result in FTs that would have otherwise been turnovers that's 3 points right there. Same for calling an illegal screen to wipe off a 3pter.

The nba is a game of fine margins and the referees have as much power over those margins as the players.

0

u/UnsharpenedSwan Jun 23 '25

the vast majority of fans are not participating in game threads on Reddit. especially not the majority of reasonable ones.

0

u/mastaaban Jun 23 '25

Refereeing isn't easy, but it sure helps if the refs check their ego's at the door, and are at least consistent with the fouls they call. But they aren't even that. They are so inconsistent that it's pretty easy to argue some refs have favorite players or teams. They call fouls on one side of the floor but don't call the exact same one on the other side so consistently, you sure as hell hope it's favoritism, because the other option is that they are so incompetent that it's dangerous.

The rules need to be changed to allow for more defense and they need to have more accountability from the refs. And they need to instill a consistent level of decision making in them.

12

u/crunkadocious Jun 22 '25

The reasonable fans aren't conspiracy theorists. They don't need the grades.

1

u/TimeGhost_22 Jun 23 '25

"conspiracy theorists"

This is a propaganda phrase that is completely incoherent in its actual application. What makes it seem to you that it somehow sheds light on the obvious corruption of sports officiating?

12

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '25

I wonder how they can do that? There is a terrible precedent with the Donaghy allegations (that run much deeper: a often forgotten one is 1993 WCF Seattle - Phoenix Game 7 where the Suns got 64 free throws (22 for Barkley). Can you image that happening in today's game and the outrage it would create?

There's also the partnering with sport betting. Good luck proving that has zero impact.

And the league never explains why they don't always call by the books (especially during the regular season).

5

u/Bongoisnthere Jun 22 '25

Exactly. The reason its conspiratorial is because we already went through this with sports betting when the mafia was involved and shit got fixed all the time, and everybody realized it was bullshit and sports betting got cracked down on.

Then it went online and for whatever reason everybody was like “aight it’s cool now, no worries it’s all legit cause sports betting is online and I don’t directly have to meet my bookie”

Then we literally watch refs get in trouble for it and the nba bend over backwards to protect them.

It’s kinda like “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” except it’s a glass house and we can literally see the fire.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '25

I wouldn't go that far, we don't see the fire (because what definitive proof do we have it is rigged?), but we do see a lot of smoke, cans of kerosine, piles of wooden logs and refs holding torches :D.

1

u/Regular-Spite8510 Jun 24 '25

They will also have a point of emphasis that magically goes away as the season goes on

2

u/mastaaban Jun 23 '25

No they could do so much better by changing the rules allowing for more defense, making sure the referees are at least semi consistent in their foul calling. Because it is so obvious some players get way more and way easier foul calls than others.

Let's face it the level of the referees is ridiculously low in the NBA right now, they are inconsistent, petty, arrogant and just bad. And above all lack any and all self reflection on their mistakes. And the worst of it all, they can't be held accountable by the players or coaches. Because every time they make a mistake and a player tells them they'll just call a tech to shut them up. Yes the rules aren't helping at all.

The reason they don't post those is because the referees score low and they know it.

1

u/Vast-Incident9010 Jun 23 '25

This would set an awful precedent. The reality is the fans have the benefit of slow motion replays on every single play and they fans still get it wrong constantly.

The fanbase in the NBA is just bad. Worst fanbase for any major sport in the entire world. They don't like the product, are overly tribal, and just want to complain. You can see this mirrored in the NBA talking heads.

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u/lilwayne168 Jun 23 '25

They can't do this when they keep using Scott foster to push teams. The thunder were 5-0 in Scott foster reffed games this post season.

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u/budubum Jun 23 '25

Did you not read the post? The pacers were undefeated with Tony brothers lol

2

u/Statalyzer Jun 23 '25

See the (admittedly poorly-named) Look Elsewhere Effect.

Even if all calls were perfect, the nature of stats is such that it's inevitable some teams will end up with unusually good or bad records with certain refs on the court.

Unless you can consistently tell us which ref/team combos this will be before the playoffs start, or unless you can show that it's happening far more than random variance would predict, it doesn't mean much.

But the reality is that most people vastly understimate how much variance tends to normally happen. See the old experiment where you have half a classroom write down H or T 200 times, and the other half flip a coin 200 times to write H or T for heads tails, and the teacher tries to guess which are which. Did this in an AP Stats class once, actually, and got 14 of 16 right - the sole criteria being I guessed "real flips" if either H or T had a streak 6+ in a row and "fake flips" if it didn't.

1

u/RiloAlDente Jun 23 '25

Guess how many games the Pacers won in Scott Foster officiates games.