OAKLAND — Both Steve Kerr and Stan Van Gundy made it clear on Thursday night that they’d like to see the NBA take a hard look at altering the current replay system.
The head coaches of the Golden State Warriors and Detroit Pistons offered their opinions after NBA commissioner Adam Silver admitted that the league is looking into speeding up the end of games in an effort to appeal to young fans.
“I’ve been one of the few who I’m an anti-replay guy,” Van Gundy said during his pregame press conference at Oracle Arena. “Let’s just go with the referee’s’ calls. That isn’t ever going to happen because they don’t want to watch [their mistakes] on ESPN the next day.”
Echoing comments made by Kerr, Van Gundy questioned why the league alters its rules for the final two minutes of the game in the first place.
“So, we really don’t care what happens the first 46 minutes,” Van Gundy said. “But we want to get every call right. Well, we don’t actually care if we get every call right in the last two minutes. We pick and choose the calls we want to get right in the last two minutes. So we end up in replay. So we want to get all the out-of-bounds calls right in the last two minutes.”
During his extended critique, Van Gundy argued that the replay system should be scrapped altogether.
“The issue is, the most important calls in our game are, ‘Was it a foul or not?’ And we’re not replaying that,” Van Gundy said. “So, the hell with it on everything else. In my opinion, let’s just play if we’re not going review the most important calls.”
While praising the league for its willingness to experiment with replay, Kerr also concluded that it’s time to streamline the process.
“I’ve always felt that human error is part of sports and it’s very, maybe valiant is the right word, to try to be perfect, but it’s impossible.”Detroit PistonsGolden State WarriorsNBAStan Van GundySteve Kerr
Find out more at www.sfexaminer.com/join/