The rules, plays and processes referees are watching the closest

play

There are many moments in the NBA playoffs that can swing a series, such as a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, a late and-1 bucket or an alley-oops dunk.

In some cases, it could be the blow of the referee's whistle, as a late-game block/charge call or an overturned bucket could help determine who goes home.

With the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics heading for a best-of-three series in the NBA Finals, what will officials be watching the most? When the games matter most, are any points of emphasis increased?

Monty McCutchen, NBA senior vice president for referee development and training, talked with Tim MacMahon about the X's and O's of challenges, how Finals officials are chosen, and the protocols of removal.

Reviewable during an NBA game? Is any of those parameters changed during the playoffs?

Everything is the same. The NBA Finals and conference finals are held in June and October, respectively. It's an important distinction to make.

The reviewable matters are more difficult to explain due to the fact that each of them has their own set of reviewable matters. Maybe we can unify that. You can always check to see if a shot-clock violation happened. Someone can be seen if they were out of bounds before the shot. There is a chance that there was an eight-second violation.

Reviewable matters are out of bounds when it comes to coaches' challenges. If you think the opponent's best player was the fouler, they're going to call it on their seventh man. They think it's on their best player. You have to call it on your team.

Is it possible for referees to overturn another call while reviewing other calls?

Whether it's a challenge or a review, there's a difference. Let's say the official thinks it's an offensive foul and we call it a defensive foul. If the play is clear and conclusive, we can get that play called correctly. It's not possible to see a play out of pick-and-roll and see another play that you didn't call. The play that you're challenging is the only thing that matters.

The review rules have changed recently. There is a process for reviewing calls.

The competition committee takes high-profile plays into account. It was used for last-second shots. There was a single paragraph in our rules. The page count is 4 1/2.

The playoffs are the most important time of the year. We noticed during the playoffs that we were calling off-ball fouls when someone was shooting. It takes time to blow the whistle when a play is illegal and so we added that one to help determine where the first illegal contact was. The shot is in the air but the first illegal contact happened before that.

If the style of play starts to change, it's because of play. It was added because clear-path fouls became very difficult to adjudicate in real time. All of these things happen organically.

During the Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, Max Strus made a shot that was taken off the board. What point do you think it becomes nonreviewable?

There is a point of no return for us. The rule has been in place for a long time, but the way it used to work was that a referee would look at the next timeout to see if that was a 2 or a 3. If one happened in the third quarter, you might not get to that until after the first mandatory timeout.

In an effort to speed up play so that we took less time, we instituted the fact that we were going to review all 2s and 3s, not by referees." The twirly-bird signal is not given anymore because every single 2 or 3 is triggered.

There were 15 other incidents where points were taken off the board this year from a team, including Miami. There were a lot of close calls where they would have reviewed them. Strus would have been inbounds by 2 or 3 inches. The review would have continued.

I want our fan base to know that the process is quicker now. When I was a referee, we waited on that mandatory timeout to review it ourselves. We were able to communicate it back to the table and correct it at 8:28, saving a lot of time.

Those can't be announced live. No one wants to hear an announcement when the ball is dribbled up. If you hear that while you're going up for a layup and you've just lost three points, that can have a big impact on the game. If we did it in live action and just took points off without announcing it, it would cause a lot of confusion for the team because they don't know why they don't have three points and they argue about it. The first dead ball is the best.

There were two dead balls before the announcement. The two were quick. One was an out-of-bounds in the backcourt where we give them the ball as soon as they're ready, and the other was a bit confused because there was a defensive three seconds involved. The outcome of the game was not affected by those 30 seconds.

During the playoffs and the finals, are points of emphasis sent to the refs?

Every month, teams are sent points-of-emphasis videos.

Teams are allowed to coach to it. If we do a good job of consistent work, from October to November to December, January, February, it's incumbent on my group to do the same things in April, May and June, because the teams have spent a lot of time coaching to that. In the playoffs, we don't make any changes.

The Celtics and Warriors are in a 2-2 tie for the NBA title. The action can be seen on ABC and in the app.

The fifth game is Monday at 9 p.m. The time is at GS.

Game 6: Thursday, 9 p.m. ET, at BOS

Game 7: June 19, 8 p.m. ET, at GS*