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55 minutes ago
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NBA fans love to get riled up by the referees chosen for their games.
That's what's happening on Tuesday as the Los Angeles Lakers prepare to take on the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals. They've noticed that one of the refs is James Williams.
Williams does not have a great reputation among Lakers fans, and a longer look at the numbers at least backs some of that up.
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James Williams ref history
Williams, 46, has been an NBA ref since the 2009-10 season, so there's a lot of data to be looked at.
The Thunder have the fifth-best winning percentage in games that Williams has reffed, at 58.2%.
The Lakers have the ninth-worst winning percentage, at 45.9%.
Some of that has to do with the caliber of teams over the 15-plus years Williams has been doing this, so it's not a perfect metric, but it's a starting point.
His shooting fouls and offensive fouls called on the Thunder and Lakers during his career are negligibly different, and the shooting fouls and offensive fouls he calls on each team's opponents in those games actually round to identical numbers.
Most of that suggests that, in reality, Williams hasn't been a totally awful ref to the Lakers but has just happened to ref L.A. during some of those lean years in the 2010s that were going to be tough for the Lakers to win anyway, while OKC was more consistent during that era.
It's easy to blame the ref when things go wrong, but the Lakers have many bigger problems on their hands against a powerhouse Thunder squad.
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