NBA will release referee grades for close games

Jeff Zillgitt | USA TODAY Sports

Beginning Monday, the NBA will release officiating reports of referees' calls that took place in the final two minutes of a close game or overtime, the league said in a news release on Friday.

Each play that falls under the defined parameters will be reviewed by a senior referee manager or basketball operations manager, who will assess the call as either correct or incorrect. Notable non-calls will also be reviewed.

The decision to release the reports is part of the league's transparency initiative, and the officiating reports will be posted with a link to video of each play on NBA.com/official by 5 p.m. ET the day after games, the NBA said. Sunday's games will be the first ones subject to the initiative, and reports from this season's playoff games also will be posted.

"NBA referees have the most difficult officiating job in sports, with so many split-second decisions in real time," NBA executive vice president of referee operations Mike Bantom said in a statement. "We trust this consistent disclosure will give fans a greater appreciation of the difficulty of the job and a deeper sense of the correct interpretations of the rules of our game."

Lee Seham, general counsel to the National Basketball Referees Association, sent a statement to USA TODAY Sports about the transparency initiative: "We did not participate in the elaboration of this process and we cannot evaluate its effect until after implementation," he said.

Transparency has been high on NBA Commissioner's Adam Silver's agenda, and in a recent interview with USA TODAY Sports, he said, "It's important that we become as transparent as possible in every decision we make. There's an expectation from our fans in this day and age and from our teams and players. They're entitled to have a complete understanding of any decision we make.

"In the so-called old days, there was a sense the league office made decisions and it wasn't always necessary to explain our thinking on everything we did, whether it was a business or basketball decision. The world has changed. The coverage is much broader and in-depth than it was years ago, and it doesn't come from conventional media. It's from the bloggers and reporters around the world who follow this league. So transparency is key.

This opens the window on NBA officiating, and it will reveal how closely calls are scrutinized by the league's referee operations staff. It is a positive step in revealing not only incorrect calls but correct calls, too. In past seasons, the league would release statements acknowledging incorrect or missed calls in the final seconds of a close game.

A close game, defined by the league, is when the score is within five points at the two-minute mark or a game that goes into overtime.

The NBA posted a sample report from a Jan. 19 game between the Sacramento Kings and Portland Trail Blazers. NBA officials reviewed 12 plays in the final two minutes of Portland's 98-94 victory and concluded officials made 11 correct calls and one incorrect call.