NBA set to allow coaches to challenge
The NBA intends to allow coaches to challenge one play per game starting in 2019 summer league, with eyes on implementing the system for the 2019-20 regular season, according to a memo obtained by ESPN’s Zach Lowe.
The rule would mirror one that has been in place for a few years in the NBA’s developmental league. Coaches will be able to challenge called fouls, goaltending and basket interference, and out-of-bounds plays. It will cost a challenge, no matter the outcome, and a timeout if unsuccessful.
(Lowe’s report says that the only called fouls are reviewable, not uncalled ones, presumably in part to confine challenges to moments where play is already stopped. It’s ambiguous whether that applies to goaltending and basket interference calls.)
As with expanded replay reviews for pass interference in the NFL, this makes sense in a reality that already includes replay. If the NBA is going to have replay reviews, it doesn’t make sense to apply them unevenly. And while we’re here, challenges are far superior to automatically triggered reviews, which aren’t automatically triggered at all but inserted by bureaucrats watching the game on television.
In practice, it will be very hard to parse in slow motion how one human being touched another. The problem with cheap fouls being called late in games isn’t that the rulebook is unclear; it’s that no one except for the Houston Rockets wants them determining games. A ticky-tack foul is unlikely to be overturned in a replay review, meaning that this will mostly be used for obvious phantom fouls, botched block-charge plays, and blatantly missed goaltending and boundary calls.
Preventing those things is good, and if there are going to be replay reviews anyway, it makes sense to give coaches a way to push back against refs’ mistakes. Until sports’ stakeholders decide that those mistakes are a small price to pay for a watchable and comprehensible product, replay will continue to expand. It must.