The NBA’s last two minutes reports have been a huge topic of conversation recently. On one hand, they allow fans and teams to receive a transparent report on how officials perform in high-pressure situations. On the other, they do not change anything about the outcome of games and only serve to bring vitriol towards certain officials.
In recent weeks, NBA stars such as Kevin Durant and LeBron James have been outspoken in defending the officials against the L2M reports for those reasons. It has been an even bigger discussion between fans as people argue about the merits and disadvantages of this NBA initiative.
But while more and more people move towards a dissenting view on the reports, some NBA teams are reportedly seeking an increase in transparency. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, some teams are requesting that the L2M reports be extended to cover all 48 minutes of a game.
This could be a slippery slope. Expanding the reporting to the course of an entire game reveals even more mistakes by officials who largely do their job correctly. It allows people to use officiating as an excuse for unsavory results even more than they already do.
The goal of the referee reports, if they are even necessary, is to provide the transparency that NBA officials do their job well and to provide teams with a template of what fouls should or should not be called. The final two minutes of close games gives a good enough sample to provide that.
If the NBA wants to keep the referee reports despite the dissent towards them, that’s fine. But to expand them over a 48-minute period may undermine the goal of the entire program.
