NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that the league is considering ways to speed up the game because “people, particularly millennials, have increasingly short attention spans.” If that’s the goal, then Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy has a suggestion: eliminating instant replay.
Before the Pistons’ 102-97 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, Van Gundy told reporters that there’s no point of instant replay if the referees aren’t going to use it to look at fouls. From mlive.com’s Aaron McMann:
“We really don’t care happens the first 46 minutes, but we want to get every call right (in the final two),” Van Gundy said. “Actually, we don’t even care if we get every call right in the last two minutes — we pick and choose the calls we want to get right in the last two minutes. So, we end up in replay.
“We want to get all the out-of-bounds calls right in the last two minutes. Surprisingly, the most important thing is, we don’t care about getting foul calls right in the last two minutes. But, we’ve got to get out-of-bounds and goaltending and that stuff right.”
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“I mean, if we’re going to go replay with the idea to get it right, well, then at least let’s get every call right,” Van Gundy said. “Run a play, (then) let’s go to the replay and make sure we got it. Let’s go another play and go to the replay and make sure we got it. Otherwise, let’s just play. Let’s just play.
“And that’s been my thing — the time I spent out, you’re sitting there just watching it and going, ‘Oh God. Another replay.’ I mean, referees are really good in our league. Sometimes they’ll make a mistake — that’s all part of it — and if we’re not going to replay fouls, then I don’t see what the point is. I really don’t.”
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“The most important calls in our game are, ‘Was it a foul or not?’ That’s the most important — and we’re not replaying that,” Van Gundy said. “So, to hell with it on everything else, in my opinion. Let’s just play.”
Van Gundy isn’t expecting a change anytime soon — he said getting rid of replay “ain’t ever going to happen” because the league doesn’t want incorrect calls being broken down on television the next day. He added that he understands looking at the clock late in games and looking at replays during timeouts, but he doesn’t approve of it stopping the flow of the game.
Some thoughts:
Van Gundy is right that this isn’t going to happen. The NBA didn’t launch its replay center in Secaucus, NJ, in order to abandon it. Since replay was introduced in 2002, the trend has been to allow the officials to review more calls, not fewer. For years, it was only used to look at last-second plays at the end of quarters.
The simple fact that replay reviews put games on hold creates a problem: interfering with flow. The question here is not whether or not replay is good or bad; it’s how much of a disruption to the flow and rhythm of the game can be tolerated. Everybody wants officiating to be accurate, but nobody likes it when games get bogged down because of repeated, lengthy replay reviews.
The NBA expanded the use of the replay center this season, allowing officials in Secaucus to make calls in order to cut down on the average length of reviews. I’d argue that the league needs to keep going in this direction, speeding up the process as much as possible. If game length and flow become primary concerns, then reforms can also be made to timeouts … as long as the league is willing to live with some lost ad revenue.
Courtesy: CBS Sports
