Does NBA need to rethink replay? Doc Rivers says yes

Doc Rivers' fine from the NBA hasn't come quite yet.

But a memo about the controversial play in his Los Angeles Clippers' Western Conference semifinals Game 5 loss Tuesday to the Oklahoma City Thunder was sent late Wednesday. That memo from Rod Thorn, NBA president of basketball operations, went against Rivers' belief that the out-of-bounds call should have gone his way, saying that there was no clear evidence to overturn the initial call.

Maybe league officials decided that, rather than send a bill Rivers' way, they'd quietly forward it to shamed owner Donald Sterling, because, well, it's the least he could do. This exciting series, which resumes in Los Angeles with Game 6 on Thursday night, doesn't need this stain.

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The truth about video replay is that fine-tuning will be far more complicated than Rivers made it sound in his postgame rant in which he called for its outright abolition. There's a quandary about the current rules that has been exposed in the playoffs, the fact that the inability of officials to retroactively call fouls while reviewing tape for a separate purpose can lead to awkward circumstances.

Reggie Jackson clearly was fouled by Matt Barnes with 11.6 seconds left, and he never would have lost the ball in the first place had the foul not occurred. And no one, not even officials who are supposed to follow their rulebook, likes staring a truth right in the face and not doing something about it. Conversely, teams that have a foul called against them merely because the officials went to the tape for an unrelated reason surely will resent the randomness of these developments. What a pickle.

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'The answer is, 'Get it right,' ' Rivers said when asked what he saw as the replay solution. 'That's the only answer. I mean sometimes it's hard, where it could go either way. Then, what can you do? When it's that clear, the answer is, 'Get it right.' '

But this is a discussion to be had in the offseason, not in the midst of a playoffs in which the Sterling saga already has stolen the spotlight for far too long. First-year NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has made openness an early hallmark of his tenure, showing a willingness to listen and potentially change on all fronts that means these wrinkles will all be ironed out eventually. Rivers and Thunder general manager Sam Presti are members of the competition committee that was already expected to address issues such as these this summer. But casting instant replay to the side obviously is not the answer, if only because technology simply won't be ignored in this day and age.

Silver said in February that the NBA is moving towards using a system in which plays are reviewed in a central location so that outside parties can help the on-site officials expedite their decisions. The NHL has used this sort of system since 2011. Rivers, however, is torn on that possible solution.

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'You know, maybe we do that so we can take some of the emotion (out of it) so the guy looking at it won't say, 'Well, we blew the call so let's make it up by giving them the ball,' ' he said. 'Maybe it wouldn't be bad to have something like in hockey, they have it in Secaucus (N.J.) somewhere, or in Toronto somewhere. ... (But) that'll (tick) every coach off too, some guy ... 2,000 miles away making the call.'

But getting it right is getting it right no matter how it goes down.

'The current replay rules with our 14 triggers (that allow a review) represent the best of our thinking at the moment,' Silver said at a Board of Governors' meeting in April. 'Where we currently are represents our best thinking on the balance (between reviews and game flow).

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'I think that (a central replay center) could speed up the process. As one of our owners said, it looks pretty old school to have the officials walk over, turn the monitor around, stand there, put the headphones on, talk to the truck. If we could expedite that process, that might allow for more examples of replay.'

'One of the other things we've been talking about is giving officials more discretion once we do go to replay to look at things beyond the narrow reason that they're allowed ‑‑ the narrow trigger that allowed for that replay. So that might be something that's worth looking at, as well. But that's something, again, for the competition committee this summer.'

Silver didn't know it at the time, but truer words could not have been spoken.