Players should follow Blake Griffin’s lead and use tablets to argue calls with referees

You can call Blake Griffin a bunch of things. Today, you can add pioneer to that list.

Griffin approached veteran official J.T. Orr about a foul call he felt was missed during the Pistons’ blowout loss to the Pacers on Friday night. To bridge the gap between what he felt and what Orr saw, Griffin used an iPad so both could re-watch the play together.

Coaches are now allowed to use tablets to instruct their players from the sideline, so why not use those tablets for this, too?

I’ve always wondered why players and officials don’t review plays together. If a player can talk a referee through something that’s happening, maybe it would help the official better understand what’s going on so he can make the correct call.

Or maybe it could work in the reverse, too: if an official is explaining to a player why he did or did not get a foul call and is using the replay to show him in real time, it would help avoid some of the player-referee confrontations we’ve had in recent history.

Griffin may have set a new trend in the NBA without even realizing it. We don’t know what play he was looking at, but this is new ground that’s been broken between players and officials.

Players should do this more often. Looking at the jumbotron and cursing at the replay isn’t doing anything. Neither is the NBA’s Last Two Minutes Report, a press release that corrects or validates calls in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. Players and referees should talk these things through in real time.

And Griffin bringing an iPad to Orr did just that.