While doing my research of playoff games for each ref, I wanted to know if there was any kind of bias favoring teams with a large TV market vs teams with a small TV market. You can say yes there is, look at the Knicks in the late 90's.....or the Lakers in the early 2000's....or Bos-LAL this year. But then you can say no they dont favor the good TV markets....look at the Spurs all those years....and the Jazz in the 90s. But the Spurs and Jazz were good those years. So I thought the fairest way to look at this is what happens when theres an upset? What happens when the higher seed team beats a lower seed team in the playoffs? How often is the team pulling the upset a small market team vs a large market team? Should be close to 50-50 right?
So I looked up the current TV markets. The link I used is: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/faculty/ ... lution.pdf
I looked at all the series back to 1995. Granted some of the TV markes could have changed a little going back that far, but probably not much. NY, PHL LA, CHI have always been large markets and Mil, Sac, Uta, Ind have always been small.
Since 1995 there have been 50 times where there was a upset based on the seeding. I did not count games in the Finals because theres too many times where a 2 seed in one conference is better than a 1 seed in the other. So just looked at the first 3 rounds. Exactly 50 upsets.
The team pulling the upset had a larger TV market 37 of the 50 times. So over the last 14 years when theres an upset in the first 3 rounds of the playoffs the team pulling the upset has a higher TV market a shocking 74% of the time.
There were 11 times when a top 10 TV market team upset a Bot 10 TV market team. There was only 1 time a bottom 10 team upset a top 10 team. That was in 2005 when the 6 seed Pacers beat the 3 seed Celtics. Ind has the #25 TV market and Bos has the #10.
From 2003-1995 the team pulling the upset had the higher TV market 28 out of 33 times. 85%...over a 9 year stretch. Thats sickning. I think this a question Stern needs to be asked.
"Uhhh Mr. Stern, weve noticed that from 1995-2003 there were 33 upsets in the playoffs. The team pulling the upset had a larger TV market in 85% of those upsets. How do you explain this? Happenstance? "
Id like to hear his answer to that..... |