ABA League Embraces New Technology to Improve Officiating Standards

The analysis include: statistical overview, last two minutes personal fouls, five most recurring themes in the key plays entries, supervisory and procedural observations, development priorities, sources and scope.

1.    Purpose and basis of the review

This report is intended for ABA League teams and referees as a professional review of each round.

It brings together the Refereeing Commission’s supervisory assessments of the key plays selected from each round (for example, in Round 2 there were 144 decisions across ten games), together with the official ABA statistics and play-by-play records.

The assessments of the plays set out below are based on the supervisors’ reports reviewed by the Commission. 

This report does not assign individual ratings to referees or impose disciplinary measures. It records the Commission’s conclusions for the round and identifies areas for continued technical discussion. 

2.    Executive assessment 

The selected key plays most frequently address contact and the foul/no-call threshold, legal guarding position, classification of the act of shooting, screen legality, and contact in the post or during rebounding. These topics provide practical opportunities to strengthen consistency in decision-making, clear primary responsibility, and effective teamwork.

Official ABA statistics provide context for the round; team totals alone do not determine whether a specific decision was correct. The Commission’s conclusions on the selected situations are based on the supervisors’ assessments.

In addition, the two teams involved in each game receive a report within 24 hours of the game’s conclusion containing the decisions on the most decisive plays. At the end of each round, all teams and referees receive the overall report covering all the games together, with video clips assigned to each of these plays and the technical explanation. In Round 2, a total of 144 plays were analysed.  This procedure will be carried out in every ABA1 round until the end of the season.

Meanwhile, the referees are working individually with all the material available to them. They also take part in a weekly group session through a new educational and technological e-learning platform that enables high-quality video analysis and is being used for the first time in the basketball world. The company behind this technology recently contributed to the streaming coverage of the FIFA World Cup and works with leading educational and sports organisations in Europe, notably the Spanish Football Federation and its refereeing organisation, as well as LaLiga.