In May 2007, an academic study by economists received a lot of media attention for showing that NBA referees called more fouls against players who were not of the same race. As one of the authors told The New York Times, “it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games.” The NBA challenged these findings, with commissioner David Stern telling the Times that “our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and demonstrates that there is no bias.” Now the economists have revisited the topic and generated a further insight: A little self-awareness can be enough to level the field. Their analysis of data from games after those analyzed in the original study but before 2007 is consistent with the original finding of referee racial bias. Yet the statistics also reveal no bias after 2007. This suggests that attention paid to the original study may have ameliorated the bias, though apparently not because of anything the league did: “A phone conversation with NBA league administrators who oversee the NBA’s officiating department suggests that [the] NBA did not take any specific action to eliminate referee discrimination.”