The NBA Is Finally Looking At Fixing Two Of The Dumbest Rules They Have

Holy shit, did the internet successfully bully the NBA into realizing they had two glaring rule issues that were ruining their game to the point where we may actually see some change? I'm thinking it did. Two no brainer adjustments if you ask me. Let's start with the challenge issue. 

It never made sense to me that if you were proven to be correct about an officiating error that you should be penalized by then losing said challenge. You 100% should be given a second challenge if you are successful. I'm 99% sure teams already kept their timeout if they were correct, so this is more about teams getting boned for being forced to maybe challenge a blatant screw up in the third quarter and then being shit out of luck if they again needed a challenge late in the fourth or something. How that wasn't the plan from the jump is beyond me. Honestly, the bigger issue is you can win a challenge and the result ends up being a jump ball. We've seen teams get boned with that from time to time. 

This one doesn't really impact the quality of the game but is more a no brainer change. The next one though?

This is what brings me joy. Jumping into the defenders has gone a long way to ruin the game we all know and love. I even blogged about it last month

The NBA put themselves in such a pretzel with this shit they went on the internet and actually tried to spinzone that challenging a jumpshot was actually against the rules

Which was funny because they absolutely made jumping forward into a defender illegal for a jump shooter like 2 years ago. I'd say no fewer than 5 times a game you see guys bait the official with something like this as well as the ones who immediately go into a jumpshot coming off a high screen. There's no denying that shooters embellish this shit (as well as fall down when they shoot) because they know officials are going to give them the foul.

This is different from having their landing zone protected. That shit needs to stay. We can't have defenders landing in a shooter's space with prevents them from being able to land. That's how someone gets seriously hurt and I have no problem with that being a flagrant. I'm talking more about guys who 1000000% are not making a basketball play and are jumping forward right into a defender who is challenging a shot like you're supposed to. Steph does it, Luka does it, Trae does it, Kemba does it, the list does on and on. They all know it's an automatic call when in reality it should be an offensive foul.

If the league cares about their product and ratings and all that shit, they need to address this issue coming out of that regroup. It's a pretty simple solution in my book too. Stop calling it a foul and players will stop doing it. Call it an offensive foul every single time and they most definitely will stop doing it. This isn't to say that you can't pump fake and then draw contact, but we know it when we see it.

That's why if I had to guess, this will be fixed by the time we enter next season. It's at the point where the league needs to step in and put and end to plays like that. I can't imagine why owners would want to disagree, and you know there will be some playoff games impacted by that exact type of play. Might be the few things that universally passes, and if that happens we're all winners.