Commissioner Adam Silver has to be a bit dejected with what he's seen out of the NBA Finals so far this year between the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks, which have not been overly competitive, with Boston currently leading the series two games to zero as the series shifts to Dallas. Silver has played a large role in expanding the game globally, partnering the NBA with sports books, and other developments that has satisfied some but not all of fans' criticisms about the league today.
One of the most common fan criticisms surrounding the NBA revolves around the replay review system, which at times can take several minutes when reviewing a single play toward the end of (or sometimes in the middle of) games as officials check the replay monitor and talk things over with their friends in New Jersey.
This process has been made even more arduous by the fact that coaches now have up to two challenges per game, meaning there can be as many as four of these stoppages, in addition to referee-initiated stoppages, to look at a play that just occurred.
Recently, Silver got one hundred percent honest on his own frustration with the issue, and some potential solutions to it as well.
“I'm like a fan at home,” he said at his pre Finals per Jacob Feldman of Sportico. “Where I'm thinking, 30 seconds, 40, seconds, what's happening?”
Silver also mentioned the possibility of creating a task force designated to come up with possible changes to the process at some point in the near future.
Certain calls, like out of bounds and goal tending, could theoretically be solved with technology, which Silver mentioned at his press conference. Similar calls have been made in the MLB for replay disputes to be resolved using technology as opposed to human eyes.
A slippery slope
Of course, the most important thing in theory is that the officials actually get the calls correctly, which still manages to not be the case an alarming percentage of the time despite the number of minutes they seem to spend on each review, particularly in games that Scott Foster officiates when he has the opportunity to relish in the cameras being trained on him.
One particularly aggravating game for fans was a mid March contest between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, when the last two minutes of the game took nearly thirty minutes to play due to a combination of replay reviews and clock malfunctions that ultimately resulted in the Lakers' public address announcer manually counting down the seconds on the clock for the players to hear.
During Sunday's game between the Mavericks and Celtics, controversy ensued late when Mavericks forward PJ Washington was shoved on a dunk attempt by Jaylen Brown and no fouled was called. The fact that a replay review system that takes so much time can still miss obvious calls late in close NBA Finals games is certainly not a great sign for Silver and company.
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