From his seat behind the team bench, Ryan Lumpkin, a 26-year-old player development coach for the Wizards, could feel the eyeballs bearing down on him. It was last October, in the season opener, and Washington star Bradley Beal was whistled for a foul following a collision with Toronto’s OG Anunoby. Lumpkin could feel his heart rate spiking. “My Apple Watch,” he says, “was telling me something was up.”
Matt Reynolds knows the feeling. In the second quarter of Game 3 of Boston’s conference semifinals series against Milwaukee, Reynolds, a Celtics assistant, watched as a referee signaled a block on Marcus Smart—a call that, if it had gone the other way, would have meant the third foul on Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Charles Klask, a Nuggets assistant, winces when he recalls a regular-season game against the 76ers, when JaMychal Green rushed toward him, finger twirling—the universal sign to call for a coach’s challenge—because a reversal would mean a fourth foul for Joel Embiid. “Some of these are game-changing moments,” says Klask. “All you’re thinking is, I better get this right.”
Illustrations by Rafa Alvarez
