For the NBA’s part, it would expose how bad the refs are. 

MLB just added the ability to challenge balls and strikes,  and entirely coincidentally, a bunch of umpires are retiring after this season. 

Big one people aren’t mentioning is that a challenge operates as a timeout as well. A team needs their timeout to use a challenge. Unlimited correct challenges also give teams potentially unlimited timeouts. Now if they gave the refs a 24 second shot clock to make the call…things may be different 

Because NBA basketball is a television and live entertainment product?

It’s crazy how many people say the game would drag on if this were allowed.

We don’t NEED the same refs who got the call wrong to huddle up, watch the replay 26x in various speeds, re-huddle up, then announce it over the loudspeaker.

As soon as a challenge is called, Seecockus should already be reviewing. They should have 20 seconds to review for an obvious missed call. If clear evidence of a bad call cannot be found in that time, call stands. Play on.

It really doesn’t take more than 3 angles of a play to see clear signs of a bad call. If there are two Big Brothers watching the replays for 20 seconds each, they should easily be able to confirm or deny a successful challenge.

NBA probably wouldn’t like it because it would expose a ref who is incompetent or engaging in illegal fixing of games if they get more than 2 calls overturned in a single game

Not trying to be up till 1am catching a basketball game.

“I don’t care if it makes the games longer. They deliberately stop action to run commercials already.”

OK so you’ve already said you don’t care about the primary reason, but many of us do.

From purely basketball pov, you are correct.

But it’s an entertainment at the end of the day

I don’t care if it makes the games longer.

The rest of us do care.

I guess the argument would be that the game could go on forever since challenges take up a lot of time. Missed calls are to be expected since we are dealing with human beings it’s just a part of the game. The focus is making sure those critical game outcome altering calls are the ones that get extra attention but the expectation isn’t to get everything 100% right.

The refs have a lot of power and they’re not going to agree to being endlessly called incompetent. They’re just doing what the league instructs them to do anyway.

Because no one wants to watch a game get halted more. There are already way too many stops and pauses in the gameplay. They’re trying to cut down on that, not expand it. Basketball is a better product when the game is played consistently without constant stops.

It would expose the refs and slow the game down.

Because there are tons of inconsequential calls in an NbA game and we don’t need to spend time reviewing every single one. Who the ball goes off in the first quarter is pretty irrelevant but we would have teams challenging all that crap and the game could take 6 hours.

Would totally slow the game down.

Oh, by the way, here’s a five-minute commercial break after 20 seconds of game action.

I would love if the NBA implemented your idea.

And, no, it would not mean coaches challenge every play.

Because, if they lose, they still are done with challenges.

But, in 2026? With all the technology we have?

Why do we have to see a player being clearly out of bounds just not called?

Harder for refs to rig games, the NBA is an entertainment product foremost.

I’m personally in favour of having timeouts and challenges become one and in turn putting a time limit on challenges. If a call cannot be overturned in 120 seconds, the evidence is IMO insufficient anyway to justify calls getting overturned. Though I would love to find out if my feeling is correct and if the length of a review has any correlation to the outcome.

Can’t wait to bet on number of challenges in a game …

The world is an imperfect place. Trying to get every thing right ruins the entertainment product.

Unlimited will never happen, but the current situation clearly needs improvement.

Sure, If you want a 6 hour long game where every single player will bitch and call for a review.

Maybe like unlimited out of bounds or something like that. If your gonna challenge every incidental touch on the way to the rim then it would get pretty annoying

I fully disagree with “Basketball is a better product when the correct call is made.”

Even reviews are subjective and often still seem “wrong.”

It is entertainment first and reviews are not entertaining. They try to create this weird sense of drama out of them but it just wastes precious life. It’s a human game, let it roll.

personally i think we get too hung up on “getting it right”. how damn long are we gonna be here trying to have a perfect basketball game in an imperfect world?

7 hour games

Can you imagine how long games would take if coaches could challenge every bad call? Between commercials, regular timeouts, flops stopong play and everything else that already slows down the game adding unlimited coaching challenges would just drag it down more.

Refs make bad calls. It’s part of the game. It’s part of sport in general. Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it goes the other guys way. It’s just how it goes when you are using human beings to call games.

You know what I have never seen? A person ranting about how bad a ref was because he missed, or made, a call that helped their team win. When a ref misses a call that benefits the home team you don’t hear fans chanting “You suck” at refs. People dont care if the refs are bad and it benefits their team.

You know, I actually would support this on one condition - we use the mlb version where the players must request the challenge and they must do it immediately. So the moment someone twirls their finger, we go to the monitors. If it’s wrong, that’s it. Challenges done.

Makes the refs look like idiots despite it being justified

They consistently get calls wrong after replay and the breaks destroy the continuity of the game.

Time and watchability

The refs know they’re bad, and we would have to watch a thousand challenge breaks per game.

The argument is that the game would never end

Depending on how you solve this, I think it would be very good. I think you either have to cut timeouts down, or you have to speed up the review process however you can. Even reviews that are about who touched the ball last are way too long.

It would expose how bad the refs are for sure, but it would legitimately make the games even longer than they already are.

Between the insane amount of ads, all the free throws, and now additional challenges, the stoppage would ultimately result in less people watching.

This is genuinely the peak of “careful what you wish for”. The games would turn into being unwatchable slogfests.

There’s too much subjectivity in basketball compared to a sport like baseball with more challenges. Baseball challenges are “its in the zone or its not” or “the player was on the base before it was caught or he wasn’t”. These are binary and can have frame perfect analysis ready in seconds.

Basketball calls are far more subjective, and you’d end up being pissed about the actuality of the rules. And they’d constantly have to update. Example, the proximity foul. If a player marginally fouls a player and they lose the ball out of bounds, instead of a weak foul being assessed, the refs would just award the ball to the other team. But then challenges were added and players knew they didn’t touch the ball last, so would challenge and it’d have to be overturned in spite of a clear foul. There were many examples of the Pat Beverley Lebron play.

There’s just always another step fans will be unhappy with. Once you get unlimited challenges, you’ll be upset you can’t challenge fouls that WEREN’T called. And then getting that would have challenges being called every 5 seconds because the players know that they were hit, you have to stop live play, and then you have to judge if this marginal contact was enough to affect the shot.

And now you have unlimited challenges throughout the entire game and it’ll still suck because referees will be far too scared to make calls so the game is constantly stopping and people will call for automated refereeing. And then automated refereeing will have no leeway and half the fans will complain it allows too much and the other half of fans will complain it allows too little contact and that the game needs physicality.

There will never be pleasing the fans and I honestly wish there weren’t any challenges at all.

Speed of the game.

Also, refs would have a lot harder of a time fixing the games.

games would be even longer than they are as is

Do this and also deduct 5% of the refs’ game check per overturned call and they might actually start getting their shit together

Just do the out of bounds chip thing and the retroactive technical for flopping and I think it would help a lot. Ref should have more mental bandwidth if they don’t have to track out of bounce and if there were less flopping. Then circle back after these are implemented.

Edit: I got side tracted… op’s proposal make sense but the problem is the game could take too long

It’s just a slippery slope. At some point the refs might be like “fuck this, it’s too much, you lose your challenge”.

For fans, there’s no argument, this would be a good thing and help to make the game better for a lot of people. However, the game isn’t owned by fans nor is it decided by them.

For the officials, the argument is that they don’t want to look stupid. That may not be their official argument, but its the one they cling to the most.

For the NBA, its owners, and teams, its probably a combination of not wanting the game to slow down and make it unwatchable, to proving the incompetence of the referees. The NBA already has a refereeing problem with so many people thinking its rigged, especially more recently, so giving teams unlimited challenges unless they screw up will just add to that. The NBA and its owners are walking a fine line between trying not to look corrupt and giving fans the illusion that their voices matter.

For them players themselves, I can see it going either way: they could either like the challenges or not, but it will depend on the player. Someone like SGA who flops a lot likely don’t want to have his flops challenged, while someone who doesn’t flop or commit many fouls would prefer a more thorough challenge system.

Holy fuck what’s wrong with y’all? You hate the game.

Abolish all replay.

It would add an hour to the game if you allowed a challenge for every wrong call

NBA game turn into a Supreme Court case

Games would drag out, they constantly go to commercials anyways during every time stoppage

Some questions shouldn’t be asked.

Slowing the game down too much

1. Time

2. If you could just challenge nonstop, you would screw up the game. Refs are letting both teams be a little physical? Just challenge every possession and there’s technically going to be something there. Refs now have to call the tightest game imaginable to compensate.