NBA’s refs union calls for an end to ‘Last Two Minutes’ reports

The NBA’s 2015-16 campaign could end as early as this week, and the league and its referees failed to get through an entire season without coming to figurative blows about the “Last Two Minutes” policy.

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In case you’re just catching up, this has nothing to do with your uncle’s favorite time to tune into an NBA game. This has to do with the league’s season-long release of its reviews of calls gone wrong, and (though mostly ignored) all the calls that went right. Or not called at all.

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr recently criticized the program, calling it “unfair,” though NBA commissioner Adam Silver and league vice president Kiki Vandeweghe doubled down on its place in the league’s program, once again citing “transparency” and the chance it gives fans to glean some insight into how it expects its referees to call the game. A game that just about everyone, save for angry fans and table-pounding media, agrees is just about impossible to call.

With the criticism at about a fever’s pitch following an Western Conference semifinal round that was badly bungled, the National Basketball Referees Association on Tuesday sent out a press release asking that the NBA do away with the “L2M” reports. In it, the referee union made some salient points:

Reasons to End L2M Reporting and Other “Transparency” Measures

Transparency does nothing to change the outcome of the game.

Transparency encourages anger and hostility towards NBA officials.

Focusing on officiating statistics encourages stat-oriented, versus game-oriented, officiating. It is in the best interest of the NBA and its fans to encourage and develop game-oriented referees that balance game flow and fair play.

Efforts to promote transparency have encouraged the idea that perfection in officiating is possible. Perfection is neither possible nor desirable; if every possible infraction were to be called, the game would be unwatchable and would cease to exist as a form of entertainment in this country.

Transparency has been misused as a catalyst by some teams to mobilize fans against the officials in an attempt to coerce more favorable treatment.

While the goal of transparency was to promote understanding and credibility, there is no evidence that progress against these goals is being made.

None of these points are off. The issue here is that NBA referees aren’t actually becoming better at calling the game because of the released reports.

And, worse, NBA fans aren’t becoming better and more intelligent fans because of the reports.

NBA fans are, by and large, ignoring the reports and the percentages that go with them. They’re ignoring the fact that referees are calling nearly perfect games in the eyes of the league that employs them, as fans only raise a hackle when obvious calls aren’t given the whistle, or (let’s be honest with ourselves, here) calls or non-calls harm the prospects of their favorite team.

The “L2M” reports were designed not only to point out calls (or non-calls) that went awry, but to inform fans that the overwhelming majority of referee decisions fall directly in lockstep with how the league wants its games to be called. From USA Today:

With the numbers available on May 19, VanDeWeghe said refs made the right call 96.2% of the time on whistled plays and were 87.2% accurate on all plays, including non-calls, on more 500 reviewed plays during the playoffs.

A very vocal majority of NBA fans and media have chosen to stay willfully ignorant of as much, only pointing to the smudge of the Sistine Chapel when it either suits their fandom, or their ability to fill up a column and/or a radio or TV spot.

Sometimes, with one of the league’s television partners, the same applies for all three media outlets listed above in a single day.

As a result, the referees once again get the shaft, with fans and media continually failing to provide any workable solutions to a problem they see as so pressing. No new candidates are ever offered up to hire, no new training techniques or post-game punishment routines are suggested to develop, as if these referees aren’t trained and reviewed and denied employment (due to poor work) already. Just weak bluster with no real solutions, prior to the next segment about the NFL draft.

So, yeah – NBA referees are in a hopeless situation, as they prepare to ruin your night and possibly your season with a quick-hit block/charge call that the league insists they make. That doesn’t mean the league should get rid of the reviews.

The referee union is doing its job, asking for the reports to once again stay sealed is understandable, but the league has to continue to release these things.

The point isn’t about “transparency,” though. We should be exploring, as those that follow this league, every avenue we have to become more and more intelligent about this league. Even if this leaves us forgetting how many ounces go into a quart, the name of the other brother from the Black Crowes or our wife’s middle name, the onus should be on us to become smarter fans. The more information, the better.

It should be on us to look at the reports and note that the call we couldn’t understand from the night before was made in accordance with how the league expects these whistles to blow. Or not blow. It’s true that the “Man bites dog” headline is always going to receive more clicks than when the two are switched, but that doesn’t mean the NBA should throw the man, the dog, the baby, Rich Robinson (I just looked him up) and the referees out with 32 ounces of bathwater just because we’re only focusing in on the calls gone wrong.

What’s also clear is that the NBA and its referee union still have a long way to go when it comes to informing the public at large about how great NBA referees are at their jobs. I spend just as many nights yelling at the TV over a call I didn’t agree with as any NBA fan, and league broadcast partner Mike Breen’s unending “teacher, you forgot to collect our homework”-defense of the refs should leave all of our eyes perpetually rolled, but this is an impossible game to get right.

If read the right way, these reports are supposed to remind us of that. They’re not supposed to add fuel to the fire. That’s our burden, though, and not the NBA’s.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops