Was it a foul, or not?

[youngump]

Originally Posted by bainsey

"Geometric," Young? Not sure what you mean there. The court dimensions are the same throughout the game.

It really all comes down to emotion, perception, and how we deal with both. When we miss most calls, people get mad, then move onto the next play, and the anger usually subsides. ("The ref screwed up that play.") If the call is missed at the end of the game, the sequence would still be the same, with fewer steps: people get mad, then... that's it. Nothing to follow, so the anger carries over into post-game, and sometimes the next day, often skewing the error to appear far greater than it really is ("The ref screwed up that game!"). In reality, it was no different than any other mistake, but emotions often overtake logic in such circumstances.

That leads to my point: If the NBA or any other league is going to apologize for an allegedly bad call at the end of the game, it better do so for mistakes at all other times of the game, or not apologize/acknowledge at all.

What I mean is that one way to look at things is just to assume every mistake has an effect on the score (which I call arithmetic effect). An alternative way is to evaluate the odds of winning if not the mistake versus in the case of the mistake (which I refer to as geometric effect). The mistake at the front of the game just doesn't change the odds of winning much.
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