Many fans have complained about the officiating in the NBA for decades. These complaints have turned into outright accusations and even conspiracy theories.
A few years ago, perhaps in an attempt to quell that criticism and skepticism, the league started issuing a “Last 2-Minute” (L2M) report after each game which lists calls that referees got wrong. At the very least, it has brought some transparency to NBA officiating.
There are critics of these reports, however, and such people say these reports do nothing to help improve the way games are called. New Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick seems to be one of those critics. During an interview with Hasan Minhaj, he said the league should get rid of its L2M reports (h/t Lakers Nation).
“There’s always been a human element to the sport. Referees are a big part of our sport and they’re graded just like all of us, they’re scrutinized internally I’m saying. If I have a good game or a bad game, I’ve got to then go watch the film the next day with the team and we’ve got to talk about it and we’ve got to fix the problems, they’re getting that within the referee’s association. So there’s always been that human element. Technology has made it where the eyeballs and the magnifying glass on them has I think made it harder. As far as the Last 2-Minute report, I hate it. I don’t think we should do it. There’s some times where the league will come out and they’ll be like that was the correct call and we’re like no we all watched the replay 17 times, it was not the correct call. What does the Last 2-Minute report do? We can all see what happened. The [Tyrese] Maxey, you brought up the travel, but what about Game 2 when his jersey gets held on the inbounds play? That should’ve been a foul. And then they come out with a Last 2-Minute report like, Josh Hart fouled Maxey, well no [expletive]. I don’t need you to do that. The intent there is for transparency, I think the intent is correct. But does it solve any problem? No. Does it make anybody feel any better? You think 76ers fans woke up the next day and were like, league got it right this time? … I know it slows the game down at times, but I like replays within the game. I think it’s fair to have replays. I think there’s some stuff, and again I have nothing to do with the rules committee, but there’s some stuff where we see something happening in a replay and they’re reviewing the replay for something else and its blatantly obvious that this one thing happened, but it’s not reviewable. Can we tweak some of that stuff, I don’t know.”
Of course, there is always the possibility of mistakes being made on a L2M report. The Lakers have arguably been on the wrong side of that at least once over the last two seasons, at least according to some fans.
But if the NBA uses these reports to hold referees accountable and even discipline them if continued mistakes are made, then it is a necessary, yet imperfect, step forward towards fixing its officiating issues.
