The NBA’s fairly new postgame referee reviews — called Last Two Minutes reports, or L2Ms -- are under fire. They’ve only been around since March 2015, and were intended to provide some transparency around potentially controversial calls in close games.
Why the NBA needs referee reviews
Players, coaches, and referees are all speaking out against the league’s last-two minute reports, but they serve an important purpose.
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If a game is within five points at the two-minute mark or regulation or overtime, the final 120 seconds of the game will be subject to a thorough after-the-fact review by the league office. Every call and non-call will be dissected and reported in the L2M, which is typically released the next day.
Officials, of course, have always hated these reports. But now players are being vocal about their dislike of the reports. Kevin Durant was the victim of an incorrect non-call on Christmas Day that was highlighted in an L2M report. Instead of feeling vindicated, he said the L2Ms throw referees under the bus and are unfair.
LeBron James has also been a vocal critic of the reports. LeBron’s argument has been that focusing on the last two minutes negates the work officials do the other 46 minutes of the game. Good work, in his estimation. Stan Van Gundy agrees.
At the same time, per The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski, some teams are pushing for full 48-minute reports to maximize transparency. This would seem to allay concerns LeBron and Van Gundy have, that mistakes in the final minutes get more attention than correct plays in the first quarter. If the NBA moves to All 48 reports in lieu of L2Ms, it seems as though some critics would be on board. But the refs surely don’t want that.
Durant’s argument against the L2M is that it doesn’t matter if refs miss a call, because the result doesn’t change. He argues that the Warriors lost on Christmas, and deserved to lose, whether Richard Jefferson tripped him or not. That’s a healthy perspective for Durant and for players to have. That’s also a lesson worth teaching kids: don’t externalize failure, don’t blame everyone else for your problems, take a wider view of success and failure beyond singular moments.
But there’s another important lesson here about the impossibility of perfection, about the chaotic randomness of life, and about human fallibility. Is that all a little too nuanced for sport? It shouldn’t be. It’s unfortunate that some meathead fans use the L2Ms to harass NBA referees. The NBA should do everything it can to protect referees, even if it means training arena security personnel to boot the worst ref hecklers more quickly than usual.
NBA players put themselves out there every night for scrutiny, and receive heaps of abuse in the process. Referees are paid handsomely to do the same. What the L2M reports have really done is emphasize how excellent the referees are (at least, in the final two minutes).
The refs’ union itself touted the high success rate in a press release titled “NBA Referees Near Officiating Perfection” a couple months after the reports debuted. They claimed the reports revealed a 97 percent success rate in analyzed calls. That’s an excellent mark, something the refs should be proud of.
This is the true aim of the NBA, not to throw the refs under the bus or create a hostile environment for officials. It’s to show how fairly its games are conducted. For a league that had a major ref scandal within the past decade, transparency is critical. You’d think referees would understand that, even if it means a little more scrutiny over their performance.
Despite the protests of the refs and some players, L2Ms aren’t going to disappear. They are, in all likelihood, going to expand. This should prove that NBA referees are really damn good at their jobs, and it should reinforce that eternal sporting lesson that even the best in the world mess up sometimes. They are humans, after all.
