Box Score Beat

NBA’s Online Rulebook Shows Smart Progress

Posted on 17. Oct, 2009 by Collin Orcutt in NBA, Sports Journalism

In a display of innovation and transparency by the NBA, the league launched the NBA Video Rulebook on its home site Friday. It seems that now–finally–NBA fans will have the ability to both read the league’s rules and see just how those rules translate to calls on the court from a source other than user generated YouTube videos.

The video rulebook home page groups rules into various tab categories across the top of the page, including “Block/Charge,” “Flagrant Fouls” and “Traveling & Dribbling Violations.”

Hovering over the tabs displays drop down menus of subcategories, which lead to specific rule definitions and corresponding videos. Many of the videos show numerous angles of the play to better illustrate the rule.

The NBA’s referees have been in constant criticism for the past few years, most notably for the treatment of Dywane Wade in the 2006 NBA Championship series and, of course, after the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal in 2007. Complaints about the refs seem to crescendo each year around the playoffs but they are certainly not limited to that time frame.

With this new video rulebook, which Stu Jackson says was thought up a year and a half ago, it seems the NBA is stepping forward to meet these critiques. On the same hand, the rulebook quietly forces its refs to improve the accuracy and consistency of their calls now that fans have the rules and correlating video to compare them to.

The NBA promises updates to the site as new video examples are found. Lets hope they are just as open to making changes if it becomes obvious that the refs are underperforming as blatantly some fans have been claiming for years.

Tags: NBA, Online Video Rulebook, Referees, Stu Jackson