Earpieces
The referees are wired to Secaucus
Last week I wrote about the NBA’s decade-plus effort to make calls more accurate by finding some way to transmit findings from the eye in the sky, the NBA replay center in Secaucus, to the referees on the court.
Coach’s challenges were created as a crappy now-and-again stopgap way to upgrade accuracy until they figured out something more stable and permanent.
But at the time I published that story, the league had not yet enacted what they had quietly announced was in the works: every referee with a headset connection to the replay center all game long. I ended that story with a bit of a mystery: where were those headsets, which had been promised in January?
This week, headsets magically appeared. Watch Bucks vs. Thunder. Doesn’t it seem almost funny how Mark Lindsay, Pat O’Connell, and Justin Van Duyne are all bluetoothed up like valets outside swanky hotels?
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I see it like traffic cameras. Efficient at catching rule breakers, yes. But also neutering to the humans in uniform on the ground, which comes with a tough-to-measure long-term cost.
Let’s see how, over time, that affects how players, coaches, and fans see the game.
Thank you for reading TrueHoop.
I have seen that and I think it’s an evolution heading in the right direction. More important for me is the new usage of computer simulations for goaltending calls. The graphics remove all doubt about the right call, and they are fast.
The coach’s challenges seem to be more quickly resolved with the “valet” headsets
i dont want MORE tech in the game. Also its an absolute illusion that graphics remove all doubt. People tend to be delusional about AI in general. It still has to be programmed (Ive written on this field). There is a large amount of anticipation unconsciously factored into programming. If its not broke, dont fix it. Is it broke? Really? Id much rather have gambling banned and a focus put on cleaning up that.