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It's a post-game tradition among NBA fans to talk about the officiating -- but why wait until the game is over? Before each game of the NBA Finals, we'll take a close look at the crew assigned to the game to see if there's any trends that bear watching. Tonight's crew: Dan Crawford (pictured, talking with Stan Van Gundy), Joe DeRosa and Ken Mauer. At first glance, having Crawford and Mauer on the floor is a good omen for the Lakers: over the course of the regular season, those two rank among the top 11 most homer-friendly refs in the league. DeRosa may even things out for the Magic, though; only one other referee favored the road team more than him.
Thanks to Covers.com, we can see that so far in the postseason, the Magic are 1-2 in games that Crawford has officiated; the Lakers, meanwhile, are 2-1. The Magic are 2-0 with DeRosa; Lakers, 2-1. The Magic are 2-1 with Mauer; the Lakers, 1-1. For what it's worth, Mauer officiated Game 1 for the Magic in each of the previous three series, while this is the third Game 1 in a row DeRosa has called for the Lakers.
A huge key for the Magic will be keeping Dwight Howard out of foul trouble against L.A.'s formidable collection of bigs, which is clearly the best Orlando has faced in the postseason. Road teams are almost always at the disadvantage in terms of how many personal fouls are called against them -- only five out of 39 have averaged more fouls called on the home team thus far in the postseason -- but Crawford, Mauer and DeRosa rank 15th, 29th and 34th, respectively, in that regard.
(Disclaimer: For those not familiar with referee statistics, these numbers represent the aggregate totals for the crew working each game -- they're not an actual indication of how often an individual referee blows his whistle. But it's the best we have to work with.)
Howard has had pretty awful luck with the whistles in the playoffs, averaging 5.3 personal fouls a game in the last series. He's tallied at least five fouls in nine of his 18 games; five of those nine games included Crawford, Mauer or DeRosa. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything -- looking at the numbers, it seems he could have had a worse draw.
To be honest, slicing and dicing the numbers too finely is probably meaningless -- the sample size is small and it's impossible to accurately consider the numbers without context. Even so, nothing too alarming jumps out for either team. It seems the Lakers might have a slight advantage with the whistles, but only because they're the home team -- it's not like these particular refs have traditionally had it in for the Magic.
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