An empirical study of more than 4,000 regular-season NBA games has revealed that shorter referees tend to call more fouls than tall referees.
The referees were split into three tiers: 6 feet and under, 6 feet to 6 feet 3 and 6 feet 3 and over.
According to the study:
A spokesman for the NBA said the league was aware of the study months ago and reviews outside research “to see if there is anything we can learn about our staff and target areas of improvement.” But the league dismissed this paper, he said, since its findings “are based on limited information about the average heights of individuals in crews, seemingly arbitrary height groups and no information about the actual caller.”
So what could possibly explain this discrepancy? The authors have two theories. The first is that referee vantage points differ by their heights. It’s possible that shorter referee crews are actually calling better games than their taller peers.
The other theory is more speculative—and more exciting to think about. They hypothesize it could have something to do with a so-called Napoleon complex in professional referees. That, they say, is grounds for future research with a different focus: technical fouls. “One’s height vantage point should play no role in technical foul calls,” they write. “But aggressive, controlling behavior via the Napoleon complex may.”
How tall is Tony Greene?
