NBA Mulling Expansion of Instant Replay

March 19 - According to a Sports Illustrated report, the National Basketball Association is considering an expansion of instant replay, a development that could take effect as soon as next season. The concept will be presented in June to the NBA competition committee.

One particular area of focus is the enabling of officials to utilize replay to instantly convert a two-point shot into a three-pointer, or vice versa.

In addition, the coaches' rules committee has formally recommended that each team get a one instant-replay challenge to be used during the last two minutes of regulation or overtime. It would operate similar to the coach's challenge in the NFL. If the challenge is successful, then the challenger would retain the right to challenge another play. However, if the original call is upheld, then the challenger's team would lose either a full timeout or if all of those have already been used, a 20-second timeout. A challenge could not be issues by a team without any timeouts.

Stu Jackson, executive VP of basketball operations, said the league hasn't decided whether to recommend a challenge system, or to depend on the game officials to make a decision on whether a particular play should be reviewed.

After a plethora of rule changes to increase the pace of the game, the league is loath to see things slowed down by complicated instant review scenarios. Jackson states that challenges should be restricted only to dead-ball situations, as would be the case on most two vs. three disputes.

The allowable timing of the challenge will be one issue that will be critically examined. One can imagine the outcry if a critical fast break was nullified by a challenge from the opposing coach, similar to the end-game strategies employed by several NFL coaches. Further delays would be caused if such a situation forced referees to restore lost time to the game clock. More problems would ensue if the challenge was made after several possessions had taken place, muddying up game strategy if the scoreboard had to be changed long after the disputed play.

Although this fairly limited use of instant replay wouldn't solve all of the potential errors on a two-pointer vs. three-pointer dispute, Jackson and other league officials want to make a change before a major mistake is made in a critical stage during the postseason.

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