Dear Wolfers -Price, AKA a Wolfers-Price in Sheep's Clothing.

RE: Your study on racial bias in the N.B.A

So...

As I watched Game 6 of the Warriors vs. Mavericks on Thursday night, Matt Barnes, an African American player for team Golden State, placed what was called a flagrant foul(I'd call it more of a love tap) on Maurice Ager, another African American player, but he is of team Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki is also on team Dallas and is super pasty white. He and Maurice are probably BFF's, so that makes Maurice like ¼ white. Mr. Barnes has a lot of tattoos, making it seem like he spent time in the Yard. There was a white referee on the floor (probably some Nazi sympathizer...just like Mr. Nowitzki, a German by the way, in case you didn't know). The white Nazi loving ref probably made the call against African American Matt Barnes. Nowitzki is the favorite to win the most valuable player award this year, an award I might add has been won by a white guy the last two years.

Shivers ran down my spine as I now see what you're talking about.

Bravo to you Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price for what I'm sure is an expansive and expensive look into racial bias in the N.B.A. Even Mark Cuban agrees with your study and he never has anything bad to say about the refereeing in the N.B.A.

Before I get into your little study, I would also like to point out there might also be some racist attitudes towards the Irish. There is only one player in the N.B.A who is Irish (pasty white Pat Burke of team Phoenix) and he never gets to play, despite being a crowd favorite in the land of dry heat. This is a study I feel you should really put a lot of man hours and government money into. In reviewing this case, please disregard Pat Burke's less than average basketball ability and propensity to always shoot the three point shot, despite being 7' foot center, when conducting this study.

Now that I think about it, a study that's of greater magnitude than the great Irish N.B.A famine should be conducted. This study would consist of researching the obvious bias by coaches past and present Scott Skiles, Larry Brown, Pat Riley, Flip Saunders, and Phil Jackson. It seems apparent that all five have been effective and subtle in their racist behavior by never allowing Shaquille O'Neal and Ben Wallace to practice shooting free throws in practice, thus making them ineffective come crunch time in game play.

This may be a stretch, but I got a gut feeling on this one, and my mama always told me to trust my gut. The W.N.B.A is "set up" as the Women's National Basketball Association, but let's be honest, it's subterfuge. I believe in the coming years the W.N.B.A will slowly start to weed out and integrate the players it truly wants... White National Basketball Association anyone? Thus allowing the white players to "double dip" on income. Mama didn't raise no fool.

Did you ever see Hoosiers? The feel good movie about a small Indiana town who's all white basketball team overcomes obstacles to win the state championship. Their competition had players that were African American, coincidence? Who got called for fouls the most...think about who won.

I thank you Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price. I'm sure when I sit down to read your study I will find that in no way are your findings banal, far reaching, and littered with conjecture. I'm can also be of the belief that during your work on these findings, you interviewed players, studied game film, analyzed foul calls to spot any special treatment one may receive, so on and so forth. It would just be plain silly to think you only took box scores from the newspaper and plugged game stats into a multivariable regression formula....ridiculous thought I know. But you may be onto something with the box score only approach. If I were to see Allen Iverson called for an average of 3 fouls a game...playing time 40+ minutes and I were to see Primoz Brezec of team Charlotte called for 1 foul every 2 games on his 6 minutes of playing time. That box score reveals a deep underbelly doesn't it?

Your friend

Paul Hughes