S5 E15 - Sour Vanilla

But I wanna start with news that the NBA's experimenting with some new technology.

So, um, they are testing smart basketballs and wrist wearables in pre-season.

Um, the, the smart balls, I guess, are, uh...

They're connected.

Wilson-developed balls, uh, for research.

Um, a- and it's gonna affect, like, calls made during the games and stuff.

Um, pretty interesting.

And then there's gonna be these wrist wearables that, um, officials will wear to communicate with the replay center, um, to hopefully speed up that process.

You know, when we see these delays in the reviews and stuff, of course fans get really ticked off with that.

It really slows everything down.

And it just seems, for a lot of the calls, that, like, it shouldn't take as long as it does to review.

A lot of these ones that look pretty clear watching on TV and stuff, and then they presumably have even better angles than we do as the fans, as the viewers.

So, um, yeah, pretty interesting.

Um, refs as a whole are gonna be, um, uh, emphasizing a lot of different things this year.

They're trying to reduce the flopping, which we've heard about a ton over the last, you know, several years.

Um, but also they're trying to, um, not show so much force with the off arm against the defender.

Um, refs are gonna be watching for that.

Uh, they're trying to watch for anybody being reckless with closeouts on the shooter.

That's something that's been discussed a lot in recent seasons.

And then another big thing that they're really trying to harp on this year is for people to stop wasting time before free throws.

They want guys to be lined up quickly.

They want things to keep moving, keep the game flowing, uh, which I'm in agreement with.

Uh, so Eric, I'm gonna turn it over to you, man.

Like, what are your thoughts on this, and, um, are, are, are you in agreement that, like, anything that we can do to kinda speed up the process and just kinda clean the game up a little bit is a good thing?

Yeah, of course.