New Plan For NBA Refs Might Help Solve Awful Replay Delays
By far the most unwatchable element of NBA games today — beyond Giannis Antetokounmpo’s constant traveling — is the insanely long delay that ensues whenever there’s a replay review. While no one’s against the value of replay, it’s simply terrible how replay reviews often take five to ten minutes, completely interrupting game flow and basically serving as a gigantic buzzkill during an otherwise entertaining NBA game.
Anytime there’s a replay review, fans watching on TV will get a close-up of the play from the broadcast they are watching and usually are able to determine what happened far before the referees on the floor, leading to a frustrating dissonance between the live action and the viewer.
Well, the NBA is apparently aware of this problem, as its just made an attempt to mitigate it with a new plan. Starting this weekend, per NBA Communications, NBA refs will be wearing headsets during games to communicate in real time with the NBA Replay Center (based in New York) and one another.
The hope here is that the NBA Replay Center will be feeding information into the ears of the refs on the floor as soon as a play is under review, meaning that by the time refs are re-watching the footage courtside, they should already have a fully contextualized idea about what happened.
This seems like a really solid idea from the Association. Replay reviews cannot go on being this long, that’s for sure.