This was a rare case of my tongue not being in my cheek.

Lol I could have sworn…

I couldn’t disagree more. Get the call right and let the players decide the game.

And I say that as a general statement, not about this game. As I’ve said, I don’t think the bad call was what lost the game for the Knicks, for several reasons. Brunson should have known better than to jump out to challenge a heave like that. And even though Malloy changed his tune, I think it was easier to have done so after the fact than if it had been if the call was reviewed in the moment. There absolutely was contact and I thought it was a foul. (OTOH I thought that DDV was fouled earlier on a call that was overturned. I didn’t buy the “unnatural shooting motion” explanation…when you are pulling up going left, it’s natural for your right leg to kick out.)

What I took from this is that I don’t like the rule about if you lose the first challenge in the first half, you don’t get another one in the second half. But since that is the current rule, it underscores that you shouldn’t challenge a call unless you are 100% sure it will be overturned, and even then, unless it will 100% have an impact on the outcome of the game. I think that is hardly ever the case in the first half, and probably not until the last 2 minutes. So it was dumb for Thibs to put his last 2 minutes challenge at risk on a meaningless first half challenge, given the dumb rule.

But I also think that refs should have more replay discretion than they do. I have no problem with waiting a minute or two for a correct call, especially when the call will determine the outcome of a game. I like that in football, every scoring play and turnover is automatically reviewed. Obviously basketball is different, but imho the error/inconvenience should always be in favor of letting the players decide the game.

You said that tongue in cheek but it’s true.

This was a rare case of my tongue not being in my cheek. I think it’s very bad tv to have players standing around doing nothing while refs zoom with secaucus. I’d rather watch them blow calls.

One thing I didn’t get yesterday was that they ended the game with like 0.1 or 0.2 on the clock. Shouldn’t the Knicks have been allowed to inbound the ball for a tap in? Could they use the technicality on the protest call? I am sure they will lose, just thinking of their angle.

By rule, once the ball bounces off of the rim, 0.3 seconds comes off the clock on the rebound, so once Holiday successfully intentionally missed the free throw, the game was officially over.

I would argue that this is shaping up to be a relatively deep draft, not that different from years prior in terms of the number of players likely to have productive NBA careers. Finding players to take off our Top 100 prospect rankings isn’t that easy. There are a lot of good players in college this year, especially upperclassmen, and it’s one of the better drafts we’ve seen in a while on the international front.

Last February, not many people had Bilal Coulibaly (No. 8 pick), Kobe Bufkin (No. 15), Brandin Podziemski (No. 19), Olivier-Maxence Prosper (No. 24) or Ben Sheppard (No. 26) slated as high as they ended up going in 2023, and there will be plenty of similar cases this year.

That’s why it did not surprise me to see long-term-thinking front offices such as Toronto, Utah and Washington acquire extra 2024 draft assets over the past few weeks. History says there will be good NBA players selected in the middle and end of the first round, as well as in the second round. Teams are just going to have to work a little harder this year to find them. — Jonathan Givony

Maybe one out 50,000 plays in the last two minutes is as important as the one last night. We don’t need them reviewing all 50,000 at 5 minutes a clip just to avoid messing up the 1.

solution is to put all replay challenges in the hands of the refs (or remote ref) for the last 30 seconds (or so) of the game…

But they would definitely abuse that. It already takes them like 5 minutes just to see who touched every ball last.

Maybe just give coaches 3 or 4 special challenges they can use throughout the year.