If we’ve resigned ourselves to this heck—every third NFL game pausing for five minutes to meditate on what a catch means; the NLDS turning on a pickoff throw that only technically, for a split-second, maybe nabbed the runner; NBA fourth quarters bogged down and prominently featuring 1080p shots of Scott Foster’s butt as he hunches over a monitor—then we should at least use the technology that so torments us correctly.

I’m firmly in the anti-technocratic camp with regard to replay review. There’s nothing pure or romantic about human error, and luddism is self-defeating, but the best thing about sports is the action itself and anything that gets in the way of that should have an immensely convincing reason for existing. In theory, replay review has one—say it with me, doing an impression of the play-by-play guy of your choice: the important thing here is to get the call right—but too often, officials halt the game and still award the ball to the wrong team, or the video is inconclusive, or it becomes evident immediately that the initial decision was obviously correct and the refs are now boring us for the sake of making sure the game clock is accurate down to a tenth of a second. The process is thoroughly imperfect, which throws its cost/benefit out of whack. I’d be okay with feeling wronged every once in a while—putting yourself on a cross can be a perverse bit of fun—if it meant games had more fluidity.

But that seems like protesting the weather these days. Games are getting more litigious, not less. Football has had instant replay for nearly two decades and over that span has only expanded it: from two challenges per team per game to a possible three, from reviewing every important call inside two minutes to every scoring and change-of-possession play. Baseball was so resistant to video aid for so long that adopting replay felt like a watershed moment. It’s hard to see MLB rolling that initiative back. Even soccer, the most technophobic sport among the major ones, has adopted goal-line technology—an ideal innovation: it works flawlessly and takes no extra time at all—in most of its big European leagues and is, more problematically, steadily lurching toward video review of every goal, which might enter the mainstream as soon as the 2018 World Cup. Tennis is the only sport that’s added replay that doesn’t elongate and break up the flow of contests: the whole Hawk-Eye challenge process takes only a handful of seconds and is accurate to within 3.6 millimeters. 

LeBron James was fouled twice by Kevin Durant down the stretch of the Cavs-Warriors Christmas day game, turning the ball over both times. The plays were reviewed, but only to determine whom the ball had caromed off of last. At the end of what was a tight and entertaining game, we were all staring at LeBron and KD in slow-motion, as Durant reached across LeBron’s body and whacked his arm, while the players milled around near the benches. The refs must have seen the fouls too, but they couldn’t do anything about it. You can’t call fouls based on replay reviews. So they did what they could: they awarded possession to the Warriors and moved on. The Cavs lost 99-to-92. Golden State might have won anyway, but those no-calls basically ensured their victory.

If this had happened in a Finals game, which it easily could have, it would be a big deal, in part because it’s absurd. We have this thing that’s supposed to retroactively correct screw-ups, but we can use it to correct only certain kinds of screw-ups, and if it catches a blatant non-designated screw-up, we have to ignore it. The NBA doesn’t need to expand replay review to include late-game foul calls—we’re already neck-deep in crunchtime stoppages—but it would be easy to mandate that if a ref incidentally sees something game-changing on a review that’s meant to determine possession, he or she can call it. Would that mean more refs pretending to review possession and actually checking for fouls? Perhaps, though I don’t get the impression officials love being questioned by coaches and players about foul calls, so it’s doubtful they’d intentionally elect to question themselves. Then again, who the hell knows. Maybe Scott Foster thinks he could use some more help in the fourth quarter. 

These are the quandaries that replay review presents us with. If some things are reviewable, it begins to seem like everything should be. Because we could come really close to legislating games perfectly. We could take a look at every deflection, every tightrope baseline drive. We could examine every borderline foul from several angles. We have the technology.

You might say that’s silly and nightmarish, but we’re moving in that direction all the time: more stoppages, more scrutiny. We haven’t yet hit the point where a league has decided to rein things in. And we’re far from reaching the decision we should ditch replay review altogether or use it in a very limited capacity. (Was Steph’s toe on the three-point line? We’ll look at it during the next timeout.) The fundamental problem with replay review is that if you have it, you’re compelled to use it, and it’s essentially impossible to ever feel like you’re not using it wrong.