Last 2-Minute Reports In The Eyes Of The Refs

By Keith Allison from Owings Mills, USA - NBA Referees, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14743797

If you have watched the playoffs at all this year, you know that there have been a lot of controversy over some calls that the officials make, and if you follow the NBA, you know that they release "last 2-minute reports" on the errors and correct calls that the refs make in the last 2 minutes. The NBA commissioner and other have claimed that these reports are helping the officials, but the officials beg to differ.

The NBA Referees Union claims that the "last 2-minute report" not only aren't helpful, but are actually hurting officiating. The NBRA released a statement of their position on the current L2M reporting policy. In the statement, the NBRA gave their reasons to end the L2M and other "Transparency" measures. Here they are:

• Transparency does nothing to change the outcome of the game.
• Transparency encourages anger and hostility towards NBA officials.
• Focusing on officiating statistics encourages stat-oriented, versus game-oriented, officiating. It is in the best interest of the NBA and its fans to encourage and develop game-oriented referees that balance game flow and fair play.
• Efforts to promote transparency have encouraged the idea that perfection in officiating is possible. Perfection is neither possible nor desirable; if every possible infraction were to be called, the game would be unwatchable and would cease to exist as a form of entertainment in this country.
• Transparency has been misused as a catalyst by some teams to mobilize fans against the officials in an attempt to coerce more favorable treatment.
• While the goal of transparency was to promote understanding and credibility, there is no evidence that progress against these goals is being made.

I personally like the reports because I used them all the time to see the NBA's positioning on some calls all the time. The trouble came when the media started to talk about these reports and the fans became worked up because they felt "their team" had lost because of the calls of the referees. This lead to the anger and hostility towards the refs stated in point 2. And you have to think that the media displaying this report and talking about how these calls weren't made gets into the refs heads. It causes them to call the game differently which can lead to different missed calls. This is stated in point 5.

As you know, I was a big fan of the last 2-minute reports until the media started presenting them. It really made the refs an enemy of any team where a call was missed and it effected the team negatively.

What the NBRA wants if the L2M reports are to continue in the NBA is to know who the people making these reports are. They want to who this person is making the final call, how much experience they have, and why they are the ones making the final call. They also said that they want to be able to counter those calls and disagree with some of them.

My personal opinion, is that they should give them reports to the refs and the refs only. The teams, media, and fans should not be able to access these reports because they only become upset and verbally attack the referees. Another solution to this is to only do the two-minute reports in blow-outs. As of right now the league only does them in game within 5 points in the last 2 minutes and in overtime games. This causes so much controversy at the end of games. Why not only do them where a team has the lead of at least 15 points or something. If they do this, then there will be no controversy over the outcome of the game due to the last 2 minute reports. My favorite solution is to just get rid of the whole last 2-minute reports though. I think they should incorporate challenge flags instead. I feel like each coach should get 1 challenge flag for the whole game. If they use the flag and the call is overturned, they get the flag back. This would cut down obvious missed calls at the end of games such as the Kevin Love incident when Shawn Marion clearly came down on his arm. Instead of the NBA having to apologize, and fans and the media attacking the refs, everything would have been solved when the refs would've been able to review the foul or traveling violation. This would also make coaching more important. If a team were to lose to a bad call and the team didn't have their challenge flag due to the frustration of a coach on a different play, it would be the coach's fault why they lost the game. I honestly think that the NBA should try out challenge flags. It would solve a lot of problems.

So as you can see, these two-minute reports aren't really helping the officiating and hopefully the NBA and the NBRA comes to some agreement. If you have an opinion on the "last 2 minute reports", make sure you leave a comment below. If you liked this post, stay tuned because we are going to have a lot more fun posts like this with the NBA Finals here and the upcoming draft. You can also follow me and you will be able to see the posts as soon as I post them. Join the NBA Inside The Play Nation today!