The TSA of Basketball
2014, LaGuardia Airport, pre-9 a.m. — that gray hour when everyone’s shoes squeak and humanity smells faintly of regret. I’m boarding to visit my midwestern family after a perfect New York pilgrimage: Knicks vs. Bulls at the Garden, Bublé crooning to the faithful, dinner on Mulberry where the waiters judge your posture like an Olympic event.
The TSA points. You. Bag check.
And that’s when I remember: the gifts from Katz’s Deli. The agent reaches into my duffel and pulls out a three-foot paper-wrapped cylinder of cured meat, holding it aloft like she’s discovered Excalibur.
“Sir, what is this?”
“Ma’am,” I sigh, “you’re holding my salami.”
She blushes, shoves it back, waves me through. Somewhere between shame and pastrami lives a metaphor: people given too much power to slow down things that were never dangerous in the first place.
In the Replay Review era, referees didn’t evolve—they metastasized. They’ve become the TSA of basketball, detaining the game instead of protecting it. The fourth quarter's twelve minutes of basketball have stretched into forty minutes of bureaucratic foreplay. Three men huddled over a monitor decide whether a pinky brushed leather while the crowd dies of old age.
They say it's about improving accuracy, which is pandering to betting site stakeholders at best and lip service at worst. After twenty angles and six minutes of deliberation, the call that was 50/50 in real time is still 50/50 in super-slow-mo. Once upon a time, refs missed calls at full speed and life went on. Now we televise indecision.
The coach’s challenge is a compromise designed to leave everybody short-changed. Win one, get another; win again, and the NBA tells you you’ve reached your truth quota for the evening. It’s fairness rationed like gasoline in the ’70s. Refs blew two calls against you in the second quarter? That’s your problem when they blow two more in the fourth.
This summer, the NBA acknowledged the problem. Commissioner Silver promised to “streamline the review process.” Translation: a small procedural tweak, a new committee, and the same molasses pace. They moved one review duty from floor to replay center and called it progress—modern bureaucracy’s favorite move: looking busy, doing nothing.
Then came the latest innovation: wireless headsets for referees, designed to “improve real-time communication.”
Fascinating. Because long before WiFi 7, referees were already communicating at the speed of light — using photons. The technology was called hand signaling. Like WiFi, it even came with standardized protocols. Fist and point? That’s a foul. Three fingers on one hand, two on the other? It was KAT again. No firmware updates required.
But now, instead of looking at each other, they can start a conference call before they call a charge. Sure, maybe it’ll help the blind refs—they can finally hear what they missed in real time. For everyone else, it’s just one more layer of latency disguised as progress.
Can you imagine if the Warriors still played at Oracle? Between the concrete bowl, metal rafters, and 19,000 screaming Bay Area fans, those headsets would’ve picked up nothing but crowd noise and the faint echo of Draymond asking to review his own technical.
Proving my point is Steve Javie, age 109, broadcasting from a soundproof cell in his assisted living community. This legend already has the call sorted out before he starts talking. And since he calls the crew's shot before they even arrive at the monitors, now he has to fill dead airtime between two commercial breaks. Stop the madness, let this man go fly fishing and enjoy retirement a bit.
You know what headsets and procedural review don't solve? Stoppages. Because to the NBA, they're not a bug - they're the feature. Four more commercial breaks per game? Ring the cash register.
It's shrinkflation on a 75 inch screen. You're still paying full price for that bag of chips, but there's a lot more air in the bag now. Is it just a coincidence that the league decided to get serious about justice after taking financial losses in the pandemic?
Meanwhile, the fans — armed with twenty camera angles and zero agency — sit deputized and powerless. Every review becomes a civic referendum we can’t vote in.
Easy fix, let's crowdsource it:
Text CHARGE to NBA25 if you think Giannis is a bull in a china shop.
Text BLOCK to NBA25 if you think Evan Mobley had his feet set.
* Texts cost 25 cents. Proceeds benefit a scholarship fund for referees born blind.
Seriously though, here's the bottom line: I'll trade away a 3% improvement in call fidelity per game to have 3-6 fewer commercial breaks, all day every day.
Basketball isn’t meant to taxi; it’s built to take off. Every whistle is a stalled engine, every review another reason to stay grounded.
As I write this I find myself in an airport once again, headed to Tokyo now. I don't love getting up early, lugging heavy bags, and being in a cramped aluminum can for 14 hours. We put up with the hassle of travel because it's worth it - the destination offers excitement, opportunity. But you know what? The TSA doesn't make me take my shoes off anymore. I'll take it!
Take notes, Mr. Commissioner. The tighter you hold on, the faster it slips away. Let the game leave the ground. Until you do — I don’t need a headset. I’ve got my own hand signal for you.
Todd / 120 Proof Ball
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