Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra recently went on the record to give us his thoughts on the league's new coach's challenge rule. According to the two-time NBA champion coach, he himself has yet to figure out how to best utilize this latest addition to the league's ever expanding rule book.
“To be perfectly frank,” Spoelstra said, via Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, “I think we're going to have to go through it and figure out what is painful, what is real strategic, what is an appropriate risk. Because there is a lot of unknown.”
Just this offseason, the NBA's board of governors approved the inclusion of the coach's challenge rule for the upcoming 2019-20 season. In a nutshell, this new policy allows coaches to challenge a referee's call at any point the coach sees fit. The challenges are limited, though, which is why Spoelstra and the rest of the NBA's coaching staffs are still trying to figure out how to best utilize this new rule.
While some may think that it would be ideal to save these challenges for crucial end-game situations, Spoelstra provided a counterargument for the same.
“You're also getting the most focus, attention from the officials at that point of the game,” he said of such end-game situations. “And you hope it's at its best. So I don't know which way is right or not yet, until we get the experience.”
It's definitely going to be interesting to see how this new rule will affect the gameplay and the actual end result of ballgames. It will need some getting used to, but if properly implemented, this is something that should work.
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