NBA 2020-21: NBA has approved expanding the game-night roster size to 15(earlier 13) and that coach’s can still challenge calls after which the referee’s calls will be looked upon in the video replay.
Following the guidance from the league’s competition commission, the NBA’s board of governors voted Thursday to keep the challenge as an alternative for coaches going forth. It was prefaced last year on a one-year trial.
Coaches challenged a total of 700 calls last season, including the playoffs. Calls were overthrown 308 times at a rate of 44%.
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A proposal to give teams the capacity to extend their current roster on game nights from 13 to 15 for this season has been approved. This is a move being made broadly in acknowledgment of the pandemic. It is in awareness of the likelihood that teams will be dropping players from time to time.
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“There will be people that get the virus. It’s going to happen and we have to adjust,” Toronto guard Kyle Lowry said a few hours before the board of governors convened Thursday. “And when it happens, no one’s going to know how … no one’s going to understand how it happened. But we have to be able to have an adjustment, to understand that things are going to happen. We have to adjust, to go on and figure it out.”
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The NBA twitched two parts of the challenge rule from last season. Teams can no longer challenge the previous call if they provoke a delay of game violation before asking for the review.
The league has recognized in the past that it is on a bit of a tightrope between wanting to shorten games, not disrupting the pace of a game, and wanting to get as many calls as possible accurate.
The challenge option was not the most successful extension in the league last season. Teams must have a timeout left to use their challenge and they are restricted to one challenge per game despite the outcome of the corrected call and preserve the timeout only if they win the challenge.
“I’m generally not a fan of replay,” said New Orleans coach Stan Van Gundy, who was a television analyst last season. “I think I’ve made that pretty clear. And so, as a result, I’m not really a big fan of the rule. … We have a strategy. I had my assistant coaches do some research on it and I think we have a pretty good idea of when we’ll use it and when we won’t.“