The end of Saturday’s game between the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers was marred by a bizarre series of replays, officiating decisions and technical difficulties that left both teams feeling sour. The ending was so bad that it had Warriors coach Steve Kerr calling for a big change to how replay is handled.
LeBron James had a key three-pointer taken off the board late in the fourth quarter when officials who were reviewing a separate out-of-bounds decision observed that James’ heel touched the sideline before the shot. They retroactively disallowed the three, then missed another out-of-bounds call on an ensuing jump ball, leading to a Lakers challenge and extensive review.
To cap it all off, the shot clock stopped working after the second review. The game was essentially delayed by 18 minutes from start to finish while all of this was sorted out.
The fiasco prompted Kerr to suggest that the NBA should limit replay review to potential buzzer-beaters, arguing that the disruption in the flow of the game outweighed any benefits that come from other reviews.
“I’m not a fan of replay. I think we should have replay just for buzzer-beaters and that’s it,” Kerr told reporters. “The whole goal with replay is to try to get everything right, but there’s 100 plays at each end every night that are subjective. It’s not tennis. It’s not Hawk-Eye where the ball is either in or out. There’s all kinds of subjective stuff that happened. We’re never going to get everything right. I think the flow of the game is way more important.”
At this point, plenty around the league would probably agree with Kerr. The NBA has made some efforts to remedy this exact situation, but as Saturday demonstrated, it will never be popular to see replay used like this. Part of the problem is the ridiculous amount of time that certain reviews can take. Close games often grind to a halt within the last two minutes, when seemingly everything is looked at. Saturday’s game may have been on the extreme side of that, but it is still far too common.
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