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SALT LAKE CITY — It turns out the Jazz have a legitimate gripe.
This season, perhaps more than ever, the Jazz have felt aggrieved by the calls by NBA officials at critical times of games. From New York to Sacramento, Jazz players and coaches have pointed to calls, that had they gone in a different direction, could have given Utah extra wins on their schedule.
In an effort to increase transparency, the NBA began to release the "Last Two Minutes" reports in March of 2015. The league releases a report detailing the referees' performance over the last two minutes of every game, plus overtime, of any game that is within five points with two minutes or less left on the clock.
These reports have only given ammunition to Jazz players and coaches. After Tuesday night's overtime win against the Houston Rockets, the league's Last Two Minute report indicated the referees had missed six violations against Houston. They'd missed none against the Jazz.
When Gordon Hayward saw the report, he was frustrated. "To me, it seems like it's kind of on par with how the rest of the season has been going. They've had some tough calls against us, especially in close games."
To see if the Jazz's complaints were valid, I thought I'd take a look at every Last Two Minutes report published since the program began last year. For each call in the report tagged as "Incorrect Call" or "Incorrect Non-Call," I tagged which team was the committing team and which team was the disadvantaged team. I then added up the number of calls each team had in each category and then calculated a "Call Margin," namely, the number of calls each team had go for them minus the number of calls against them.
Here are the results:
| Team | Times Committed | Times Disadvantaged | Call Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKC | 30 | 12 | 18 |
| TOR | 27 | 13 | 14 |
| BRK | 29 | 17 | 12 |
| CHA | 29 | 21 | 8 |
| DAL | 34 | 27 | 7 |
| DET | 22 | 15 | 7 |
| MIL | 25 | 18 | 7 |
| GSW | 19 | 14 | 5 |
| HOU | 31 | 27 | 4 |
| SAS | 13 | 9 | 4 |
| LAL | 19 | 17 | 2 |
| NYK | 30 | 29 | 1 |
| ORL | 26 | 25 | 1 |
| MEM | 22 | 22 | 0 |
| IND | 30 | 31 | -1 |
| NOP | 24 | 25 | -1 |
| ATL | 21 | 24 | -3 |
| WAS | 26 | 29 | -3 |
| CHI | 29 | 33 | -4 |
| DEN | 21 | 25 | -4 |
| LAC | 20 | 24 | -4 |
| MIA | 14 | 19 | -5 |
| MIN | 22 | 27 | -5 |
| POR | 11 | 17 | -6 |
| SAC | 14 | 20 | -6 |
| BOS | 17 | 24 | -7 |
| PHX | 16 | 24 | -8 |
| CLE | 19 | 28 | -9 |
| PHI | 11 | 20 | -9 |
| UTA | 18 | 33 | -15 |
So, the data backs up the Jazz's point of view on this: the Jazz are significantly more disadvantaged than the rest of the league on referee calls at the end of close games. I'll be honest: I'm a little bit surprised. I had figured that the Jazz feeling aggrieved on this was a bit of confirmation bias coming out, and that other teams around the league would have similar problems.
But the Jazz have seen 15 more calls go to the opposition than in their direction since the program began. And league sources who have seen the data that includes all 48 minutes of every game, not just the close ones, indicate that the Jazz face a major disadvantage overall. In other words, the small sample size of clutch situations isn't presenting an unfair picture.
With four teams in the Western Conference currently projected by ESPN.com to finish with 40 or 41 wins, every single win figures to have a big impact in the race. That's why the issue is so important to the Jazz organization, from front office management to individual players.
Jazz coach Quin Snyder knows that the issue is mostly out of his control, but is doing whatever he can to teach the team to defend without fouling. "We literally drill showing our hands, staying down on fakes, verticality. (Doing those incorrectly) can potentially put you in harm's way."
Snyder is considering the referee calls as a little bit of adversity, helping his team learn what it takes to succeed in the NBA. "I think it's a learning process for our team. That's a little bit what you get when you have the least amount of NBA experience in the league."
Speaking on the team-owned 1280 AM radio station, Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey spoke about the foul discrepancy. "What really concerns us is that with our style of play, as a freedom of movement team, when fouls like that are missed it affects us more than it would some other teams.
"It's not so much the volume, it's the type of non-calls that happen," Lindsey said.
Some of those calls have been game-deciding ones. Gordon Hayward said, "I can remember one last year when Rodney (Hood) got fouled against Phoenix, and they said it should have been a foul." The Jazz were down by two points at the time, and Hood would have been sent to the line for three free throws. "And it's not a foul, and we lose the game."
That the NBA is releasing the reports doesn't make Hayward feel better about the situation. "It almost makes things worse," Hayward said. "There's no consolation."
