Officiating has been a huge topic of discussion in the NBA for a long time, but more now than ever before. The league has opted for transparency in offering last two-minute reports but that has often been more cause for frustration. The admission of wrong calls does nothing to change outcomes and often leaves a more bitter taste for players.
The new NBA CBA will attempt to remedy that in some ways by allowing players the opportunity to voice their frustrations with officials almost right away. According to a report from Mitch Lawrence of Sporting News, the league will give players more power than ever to voice their opinions on officials:
As Sporting News has learned from people who were involved in the negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement — which was ratified Friday — the players from here forward will be able to weigh in on game referees in monthly reviews, for the first time ever by name. They’ll have more input in how the game is played, with a greater voice on the league’s powerful competition committee. They’ll get more say in the on-court work rules that Stern never allowed and govern such wide and diverse things as flopping rules and the dress code.
[…]Additionally, the players for the first time will have a hotline to the union to call in to critique the work of refs in their games. They’ll be able to report not just on where they think the official botched a call, but also if they found a ref to be out of line, verbally, with how they handled blow-ups. Basically, they can complain like never before. The hotline is a response to the league allowing the new monthly reviews so that players can report something they thought was handled incorrectly while it’s still fresh in their minds.
I’ll be very interested to know how often this is used. Players will like the opportunity to voice complaints and potentially get officials to do their jobs better. But at the same time, this reeks of the same issue as the L2M reports: it does not change the outcome of games.
Officiating is part of the game and bad calls rarely actually cost a team a win. The new NBA CBA probably won’t change any of that.
