I was trying to find out if there was any data on how often coach's challenges were used. I haven't found that yet, but I did find an interesting article here. It's a bit out-dated as this is from January, but there were some interesting things in there, in addition to quotes from Quin:
Through the first half of the NBA season, challenge calls are being overturned at a higher than expected rate, though not everyone is pleased with the league's new rule.
www.forbes.com
At least as of January, about 45% of challenges ended up in overturning the call.
Here's the part about Snyder:
“The way that the challenge is used by the coaches, you’ve kind of seen that evolve,” said Utah Jazz head coach Quin Snyder. “You’ve seen games where it’s been really impactful. There’s not as many of those, relatively speaking, because a lot of time you wanna hang on to your challenges because you might need it in a more impactful time late.”
Then there's this contrasting opinion:
“There are still quite a few challenges before the 4th quarter where we thought the high majority would be late in the game,” he said. “In other words, they would save it for that critical play where they wanna challenge. Some of it are doing it in the first quarter on an out of bounds. They’re saying a possession is a possession. If it means points, we want ‘em. We don’t care first quarter, fourth quarter.”
So Quin is basically taking the DL "keep the powder dry" approach. I think it's good to be prepared for using a challenge late in the game, but I think it's also foolish if so many of these are going unused, especially as there can be some pretty drastic impacts on the game with momentum swings and, particularly, foul trouble. If your guy gets blown for his 3rd or 4th foul and he plays 5 less minutes, does that not have an even larger impact than the hypothetical "crucial call"? Having your guy sit on the bench is probably much more likely to
lead to you being in a situation where you need a crucial call to go your way. In this way, you can apply the analogy of an ounce of prevention being worth more than a pound of the cure.
An example happened last night, though when I mentioned it in the game thread someone had quoted me saying it wasn't a challengeable call. I'd have to look more into the rules, and maybe they changed this year, but this article references the overturning of out-of-bounds calls, so I'd assume this call last night was challengeable. The great thing about out-of-bounds challenges is that, as of January, the call was overturned 76% of the time. Last night I believe it was with around 5 minutes left or so, we had a chance for an offensive rebound and the ball was called off us, which it wasn't. Rudy and Clarkson were adamant, as well. They came down on the other end of the floor and hit a three. That could cost the game right there. Last season there were numerous occasions where players signaled to Quin to challenge a call and he would waive them off and even say he couldn't. But then he never uses the challenges.
Treat these like extra possessions. It's cool if you want to wait for a more opportune time to use it, but if that ends up being almost never, then you're completely wasting a resource. You're surrendering the free space on the bingo card for "nah, let's wait and see!"
