It's a favorite pastime among all sports fans: declaring referees incompetent after they inevitably make a questionable call against your favorite team.
The NBA thinks it has developed a way to placate its fans by debuting a video rulebook that offers footage of questionable plays accompanied by explanations as to why certain calls were made.
The rulebook can be found here, and according to NBA vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson, it is "a place of reference for everyone with respect to how our games are officiated."
The Web site offers fans some of the same tutorials given to officials themselves.
"It's very difficult unless you've played the game at a very high level, or better yet officiated the game at a very high level, to understand the complexity of our rules strictly by reading them," Jackson told ESPN.com. "By adding a written explanation as well as video examples, it just gives the person time to gain more knowledge about the rules or context, and hopefully a little bit more data and therefore education."
There are 11 categories in the rulebook, and from each category, a user can select a play from a list. A video plays as a written explanation of the rule appears on the side of the screen. Jackson said the NBA hopes to keep the site updated with current contested plays.
Jackson claims it is a coincidence that the debut of the video rulebook comes at a time when NBA officials are facing more criticism than ever, since replacement referees are being used while the regular staff is locked out because of a labor dispute.
"Launching the video rulebook at this time made some sense just prior to the opening of the regular season, and doing so without anticipation that we'd be using replacement referees," Jackson told ESPN.com. "Certainly officiating this game is very difficult, we all know that. And whether we're using replacement referees or our normal staff referees, they're going to make mistakes and that's true now and certainly will be true if the regular referees come back to work."
