The Brooklyn Nets are more than one month away from the beginning of the 2025-26 NBA regular season as they seek to improve on a disappointing 2024-25 campaign. Brooklyn is hoping that a second season under head coach Jordi Fernandez will lead to more wins for the franchise, but the NBA is implementing a new rule that could change things up.

The NBA announced on Wednesday that the “NBA Board of Governors approved a change to the Coach’s Challenge rules. Beginning with the 2025-26 NBA season, during review following a Coach’s Challenge of an out-of-bounds violation, the Replay Center official, instead of the on-court crew chief, will determine whether a proximate foul should have been called.” The NBA wrote that the rule is intended to speed up the timing of reviews.

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For those Nets fans that were locked in to each game, it’s a widely-known fact that Fernandez is one of the better coaches in the NBA when it comes to determining whether a play needs to be reviewed or not. According to Stephen Noh of The Sporting News, Brooklyn issued 70 challenges during the 2024-25 season and were successful in 46 of those instances, or 65.7% of the time.

In terms of challenge success rate, the Nets ranked 11th in the league as teams like the New York Knicks (78.2%), New Orleans Pelicans (74.4%), and Chicago Bulls (72.2%) were the top-3 teams in the category. It should be noted that this new rule is pertaining to challenges of out-of-bounds calls so it seems like other situations, such as whether a player was fouled or not, would still be reviewed by the on-court crew chief.

Either way, the Nets will be trying to get whatever advantage they can get as they enter a 2025-26 season in which they’re expected to be one of the worst teams in the league. Brooklyn remade the roster with players like Michael Porter Jr. and Egor Demin coming to the team to work along with mainstays like Nic Claxton and Cam Thomas to hopefully put forth a product that fans can support, challenges or not.

This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: NBA issues new coach’s challenge rule that could affect Nets