Doc Rivers wants NBA coaches to have challenge flags
Since Doc Rivers was named president and head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, no team in the entire NBA has been more demonstrative in its dislike of referees, and the rules they enforce.
Every whistle is met with disbelief, both from the team's players—mainly Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan—and Rivers himself.
It's annoying, but by ripping a page from the NFL's rulebook, Rivers may have found a way to make everybody happy:
The straw that broke the camel's back came in the final minute of L.A.'s loss against the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night:
You can see it here.
More important than that one bad call is a simple question: Is Rivers right? Should NBA head coaches be able to challenge potentially unwarranted whistles? And is it worth getting every call correct if the cost is a choppier, less-watchable product?
The NBA's D-League has experimented with the idea for a couple years. Coaches are allowed to challenge shooting and personal fouls (via NBA):
Coach's challenge: A coach can call timeout and signal to the referees to that he is challenging a call, which will be reviewed by instant replay and the officials will determine if it should be upheld or changed. Teams get one challenge in regulation, and another if it was successful, and an additional one in overtime. Personal and shooting fouls can be challenged, traveling and palming can't, nor can continuations or act-of-shooting determinations.
Everybody everywhere wants all the calls to be perfect. But that isn't realistic. Refs are humans and humans make mistakes. The NBA already reviews critical out-of-bounds related decisions when there's fewer than two minutes in a game, but that sometimes stifles the possibility of an exciting climax.
At the risk of speaking out against a progressive idea, the NBA should be satisfied with the way things currently are. And, in the meantime, for his own sanity, Rivers should probably find something else to blame whenever his team loses a close game.
