Friday Musings: Board of Governors Approves Replay & Rules Changes, Budinger Rumors, Shabazz Adapts

Hello, everyone. There's a reasonable bit of information in these musings. First, I just wanted to start by saying thank you for the support with the CH Program. It is sincerely appreciated.

Moving on.

These are the musings.

NBA Board of Governors Approve Instant Replay and Rules Changes for the 2014-2015 season.

Yesterday, the NBA announced its Board of Governors approved an additional "trigger" for instant replay review in addition to five modifications to the existing replay rules. The Board also approved three other playing rule changes.

These rules will go into effect on Friday, October 17. Remaining preseason games will be played under these rules.

Two annoyances when it comes to replays (personally): When officials are; forced to go back and review the play, or, when they are not allowed to review a certain play in which the call would likely be then reversed. Some of the changes address these complaints, I put those in bold.

From a press release.

Expansion of Instant Replay Rules

• Officials may utilize instant replay whenever they are not reasonably certain a team had an improper number of players on the court while the ball was in play.

Modification of Instant Replay Rules

• Instant replay triggers that are currently in effect only during the last two minutes of regulation and the entire overtime period(s) instead shall be in effect only during the last two minutes of regulation and the last two minutes of overtime period(s).
• Officials may now conduct an instant replay review whenever they are not reasonably certain as to which team should be awarded possession after a ball becomes out of bounds or whether an out of bounds in fact occurred during the last two minutes of regulation and the last two minutes of overtime period(s). Previously, officials could only use replay if they weren't reasonably certain as to which of two players on opposing teams caused the ball to become out of bounds.
• Officials are now permitted to utilize instant replay whenever they are not reasonably certain whether a foul that was called meets the criteria of a flagrant foul. Previously, the foul had to be called a flagrant on the floor in order to utilize instant replay.
• Officials are now permitted to utilize instant replay whenever they are not reasonably certain whether a foul that was called meets the criteria of a clear-path-to-the-basket foul. Previously, the foul had to be called a clear-path foul on the floor in order to utilize instant replay.
• Officials may now utilize instant replay any time they are not certain when any player (offensive or defensive) without the ball was fouled relative to the timing of a successful shot. Prior to this change, officials could only review the timing when an offensive player without the ball was fouled.

Rules Changes

• If a team has too many players on the court while the ball is in play, (i) the offending team would both be assessed a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul and lose possession if it had possession at the time the violation was discovered, and (ii) the non-offending team would continue to have the option of either accepting or nullifying the game action that occurred during the violation. Previously, if the offending team had possession, it would keep possession of the ball despite the violation.
• Teams may freely substitute players whenever any timeout is called. Prior to this change, there were limited circumstances in which a team couldn't substitute for certain players at timeouts.
• The shot clock will no longer be reset to five seconds when a held ball is caused by the defense with fewer than five seconds remaining on the clock.

Each of these rules was recommended by the NBA's Competition Committee at its offseason meetings.

The second bullet point signifies the NBA found a way to speed up the length of overtime-games. During the extra period(s), replays may only come in the final two minutes of overtime. The old rule offered/required replays throughout the entire extra frame(s).

Woj: Wolves shopping Chase Budinger

As you may or may not have known, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports cited league sources reporting the Minnesota Timberwolves are shopping Chase Budinger. This is a link to an article published on this website shortly after "Woj" broke the news.

Because of there are a notable amount of wing players expected to make the final roster, word Flip Saunders and the Wolves are shopping Budinger comes as little surprise. Moreover, there seems to be mixed-reactions; some fans like the idea and others don't.

Budinger is owed $5 million this season and may opt into another year (at $5 million) of his contract when the season is over.

He's failed to sustain good health during his time in Minnesota, playing in only 63 of a possible 164 games over the span of two seasons. One may argue Budinger is one of the few Wolves capable of spreading the floor because he can hit the outside shot, despite his (mediocre) lifetime average of 34 percent from beyond the arc.

It should be noted ESPN's Darren Wolfson and AP's Jon Krawczynski don't believe the Wolves will move Budinger, at least not anytime soon, according to what was said in those tweets.

Budinger will compete for playing time with Shabazz Muhammad, Corey Brewer, Robbie Hummel and Glenn Robinson III (eventually, if he makes the team) behind Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Martin.

Shabazz Muhammad is adjusting after his transformation.

In a video posted by Andy Greder, Shabazz Muhammad spoke about how it feels to adjusts to his new body. Muhammad said he lost around 20 pounds at Wolves Media Day. Known as a physical player, losing this much weight will require Muhammad to refine certain skills (shooting, dribbling) in order to have an impact during games.

There's a short-clip of the Wolves practicing if you visit the page I linked to the word 'posted,' for those pleasing browsing the web this morning.

Music.

I want to make Fridays 'Funk Fridays' but I don't listen to enough of it. Any Funkmasters out there? (sorry) (I'm serious, though, if you're well-versed in funk, post that stuff in the thread.)

Here's a song.

It's by LL Cool J.