The NBA officially has an officiating problem, and it now appears the league actually intends to do something about it. The latest incident didn’t involve players arguing with referees about missed foul calls, but rather officials blatantly missing a call that the current replay system could not fix.
Giannis Antetokounmpo’s dunk after he clearly stepped out of bounds could not be reviewed in Friday night’s match-up against the Oklahoma City Thunder, an absurd bit of reality in the NBA where a final report about the game’s last two minutes can admit mistakes after the fact but do nothing to actually fix them in real time.
While some say officiating is actually getting better, and a meeting is planned around All-Star weekend in Los Angeles in February to hopefully ease tensions between players and officials, there could be changes coming to the replay system late in games.
ESPN’s Royce Young reported on Saturday that the league’s competition committee is looking into ways it can change the rule and is adding that type of play to the agenda when it meets in March. League spokesperson Tim Frank told Young on Saturday that the replay system and its failure on Friday night will be discussed by the committee.
However, there’s no guarantee that a fix will actually come. Via ESPN:
The competition committee will look at a number of solutions to such a situation, Frank said. If any change is made, it would not be implemented until the 2018-19 season. It is also possible no changes will be made.
What’s clear is that people are making enough noise about officiating that some good changes may come of all this. That’s the only solace you can take from it, really. Sometimes, huge mistakes are necessary to make even minor changes.
