In an effort to promote fair play, the NBA instituted “flopping”
rules this season to discourage players from feigning contact in order to get a
foul call. The NBA will monitor and review all games throughout the season and
hand down punishment if they feel a player clearly flopped. They’ve chosen to
use an escalating system of punishment, with the first offense only resulting
in a warning from the league. After that, the league goes after the players
wallets. A second offense will cost a player $5000, a third offense $10,000,
and so on. Reggie Evans, an example used in the NBA’s flopping video (below),
has already committed two offenses in just the first month of the season,
becoming the first player ever to be fined for flopping. A few other players
have been warned for flopping, but for the most part, players who were thought
to be the most prolific offenders have behaved themselves so far this season.
When the league first talked about instating these new
rules, I was skeptical that players would even listen. Thankfully, it looks
like players are behaving and not trying to dupe the referees as frequently. Anderson
Varejao, one of the league’s worst floppers the past few years, hasn’t even
been warned as of yet. "I'm
not flopping anymore," Varejao said before the season. "I used to
flop a little bit." It seems that professional basketball players,
at least in the NBA, care a lot more about their checkbooks than one call
during a game. It will be interesting to see how the season progresses with
these new rules in place, and if fines are truly a deterrent later in the
season during the playoffs when the games mean so much more. As a big NBA fan,
I’m happy to see that players are taking these new rules seriously and that the
league is eager to punish those who unfairly flop during games.
Hopefully standards will creep as time goes by. Now we see a minor flop and think, "I've seen worse." But when the worst of the worst flops stop happening, the lesser flops will look as outrageous as they really are.
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