Doc Rivers is upset about a close loss that included a controversial call going against the Los Angeles Clippers.
Marc Spears of Yahoo sports quoted Rivers, who, because of this controversial call and others like it, stated his desire for NBA coaches to be able to challenge calls, similar to NFL coaches.
“I’ve been pushing for a [challenge] flag for a year now,” Rivers said. “We should have a challenge flag. That is the third time this year [against the Clippers] that [the NBA] has come back and said it was a bad call. It doesn’t do anything for us.”
The first question is, why would anyone who’s watched an NFL game want to copy their system of reviewing calls? That hasn’t exactly been a model of success and it seems to be getting worse by the year.
But even if we ignore that and say the NFL’s system is flawless, there are some other problems with the NBA copying their challenge system.
First, football and basketball are two very different sports. Even when offenses are running up-tempo, there’s still generally several seconds of dead time between plays when a coach could issue a challenge on the previous play. In basketball, the action is far more fluid.
Secondly, an incredibly high scoring football game would likely have two teams scoring in the 40’s, which would put the game at something like 15 combined scores. Conversely, a low scoring NBA game would have both teams in the 70’s, meaning each team probably made about 30 baskets.
No one call, even if it’s egregiously bad, will impact an NBA game in the same way that a bad call in an NFL game could.
It’s certainly understandable for a coach like Doc Rivers to make his wishes for a challenge system known. The Clippers lost a close game and the NBA even acknowledged that a call against them was incorrect.
The problem is that while the idea of a challenge system sounds good at first, the issue is far more complicated in the NBA than it is in other leagues in other sports.