Following the recommendation of the League’s competition committee, the NBA Board of Governors voted Thursday to keep the challenge as an option for coaches in the future. It was introduced last year in a one-year trial.
Coaches challenged 700 plays last season, including the playoffs. Calls were dropped 308 times; that is 44%.
Also approved by the Board of Governors was a plan to give teams the ability to expand their active roster on game nights from 1pm to 3pm for this season, a move largely being made in response to the coronavirus pandemic. and in anticipation of the probability that teams will be shorting players from time to time.
“There will be people who get the virus. It’s going to happen and we have to adjust,” Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said hours before the Board of Governors met Thursday. “And when it happens, nobody will know how, nobody will understand how it happened. But we have to be able to make an adjustment, understand that things are going to happen. We have to adapt, to continue.”
Also, the trade deadline is finally set for this season: it will be March 25, or roughly two weeks after the ‘second half’ of the calendar. The calendar is known until March 4, and the rest will be determined in the coming weeks.
The NBA changed two parts of the challenge rule from last season. Teams can no longer contest the earlier call if they incur a delay in the game infraction before requesting review and, in situations where officials meet to determine what decision to make, the time window a team has to challenging that decision now will not start until they get the final decision on the play from those umpires.
And just because the rule sticks doesn’t mean it can’t be changed further in the future. The League has recognized in the past that it is a little on the edge between wanting to shorten games, not interrupt the rhythm of a game and wanting to make as many calls as possible.
The challenge option was not the most popular addition in the league last season. Teams must have a time-out remaining to use their challenge, are limited to one challenge per game regardless of the outcome of the revised call, and retain the time-out only if they win the challenge.
“I’m not generally a fan of reruns,” said the New Orleans Pelicans coach, Stan Van Gundy, who was a television analyst last season. “I think I made it pretty clear. And as a result, I’m not a big fan of the rule. We have a strategy. I had my assistant coaches do some research and I think we have a pretty good idea of when we will use it and when not.” .
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