Jan 19, 2026, 04:43 PM ET<\/p>\n
NEW YORK — The NBA will resume having referees wear headsets with earpieces and microphones Tuesday, with the test scheduled to continue through games of Feb. 12 before the league breaks for All-Star Weekend.<\/p>\n
From the start of the season through Dec. 12, referees had the headsets clipped onto their uniforms — then used them during instant replay reviews and other stoppages, but not actually during live play.<\/p>\n
In this phase, referees will wear the earpieces throughout the game, including during live play, and be able to communicate directly with the replay center and each other at all times.<\/p>\n
The league told teams on Monday that the first phase enhanced officiating accuracy and improved game flow. The league also is hoping the new headsets — also used by referees in the NFL, with FIFA, the top soccer leagues in England and Germany, and Major League Soccer as well — have improved technology, after audio quality and the ability to communicate with other referees without disruption was an issue in some cases during the first phase of the project.<\/p>\n
The NBA has been testing the technology since 2022 at various events, including the G League Winter Showcase, NBA Summer League and in NBA preseason games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 19, 2026, 04:43 PM ET NEW YORK — The NBA will resume having referees wear headsets with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-417559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}