[Isaac]
The NBA is going to start fining people for flopping, beginning next year. I should let Matt weigh in, but this does raise the question of whether Manu Ginobili will go broke by the All-Star break.
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29 May 2008 12:36 pm
Comments (43)
The problem of flopping and especially the "foul every time down the court because the refs will only call half of them" brand of defense that plague the NBA are actually good examples of why hockey is better off allowing fighting.
Back in the day, there was always the threat that such play could get you popped in the mouth. The push to remove fighting or hard fouls from the game has left it completely up to the officials to deal with stuff like flopping...which is incredibly hard to recognize in real time.
Mike
Gad, if only FIFA would follow suit.
But when will the ACC follow?
(I don't want to cut and paste the superlong link and I can't do HTML, but you can google "Duke flop camp" for a laugh...)
Just to shorten some arguments: Manu flop against Bonzi and an Horry-Boozer flop. There's a great Parker flop under the basket after a layup attempt, but I can't find it.
I'd prefer an in-game penalty, like a technical foul, rather than an after-the-fact fine. That's how soccer does it, with a yellow card for diving. Most of these guys make so much money that a $500 or $1,000 fine is nothing.
That said, if soccer is a guide, I don't think this will be enforced much, if at all. It's just way to subjective and it will be difficult for the league office to get into it too much.
flopping...which is incredibly hard to recognize in real time.
Maybe this is why they're going with a fine, because it's easier to see in the replay.
I'm with Al. An in-game technical is going to affect these guys more than a fine. It's also totally appropriate -- flopping is unsportsmanlike, it's showing up your opponent and it's showing up the official. It deserves a tech. You wouldn't have to call many, just the most egregious flops, to discourage the practice.
I can see why they're going this route, though. Trying to figure out whether a guy flopped or just lost his balance would be really hard for the ref, and it might detract from the other things he's supposed to be watching.
In addition to cracking down on flopping, the league needs to call fewer charges. Every time a guy drives to the hoop, the defender is looking to step under him and draw a charge. Instead, the rules should encourage the defender to go up for the blocked shot. Contested drives to the hoop, whether they end in a dunk or a blocked shot, are among the most exciting plays in the game. I'm not saying the refs should call more blocking fouls. Sometimes a no-call is the right call.
This is fundamentally the wrong way to solve this problem. The problem is that officials refuse to call fouls unless you overreact to the contact. So if you get fouled, but keep your balance, or continue driving to the basket, you are far less likely to draw a foul than if you throw your arms up and throw the ball into the stands. If they stopped discriminating on that basis players would stop doing stupid stuff that turns the ball over or removes themselves from the play when no foul is called.
Count me in on the side of Al. If Manu flops in the 1st Q, t him up! I guarantee he won't flop for the rest of the game.
Agreed that it would be incredibly difficult to determine, though, so it probably wouldn't get called very much.
Mpowell,
Well put. The fact is that a lot of refs won't give you the charge UNLESS you fall down. That's the problem. Either you were there in time to claim the defensive postion or you weren't. Falling down should have nothing to do with. These fines are a start, but I think it ultimately comes down to the refs getting the calls right.
Earth to Matt's replacement: Singling out Ginobili for flopping is a worn out meme, and it may have to do with who's wearing the gold medal from Athens 2004 and who's not. Even Kobe acknowledges greatness in Manu.
If you ask me, the rise of flopping seems like a fairly rational response to rule changes over the last decade that overwhelmingly favor the offensive player. I'm a LeBron fan, but even I get sick of how ridiculous it is that as long as you have the ball you can pretty much do everything short of walking up to the defender and punching him in the face without getting a whistle blown.
Let's face it: how many charges get called when the defender doesn't fall down? The only way to get the call is to sell the contact. Otherwise, LeBron can drive his shoulder into your chest on the way to the basket all day long without penalty. And maybe you're okay with that if you think basketball is supposed to be a contrived sport where the magicness of possessing the basketball automatically entitles to you to any space on the floor whatsoever whenever you please and the defender must always grant this wish for you. But that just seems silly to me.
Get rid of flopping--okay--but then you're going to have to more fairly officiate offensive players' aggressiveness- especially considering most teams value positional defense way more than the occasional swipe at the ball (as they should).
While it is good news that they are finally addressing the flop (can we call it the "Reggie Miller tax"?) I can't see where it'll have an effect on individual games, which is where it has the most harm.
I mean, it's one thing to fine flopping because it's an egregious stab at the aesthetics of the game. It is a quite different thing to attempt to stop extra-curricular efforts to affect individual games. I don't see where fining a player is going to stop him from trying to win on the floor with graceless displays of ham.
Vlade Divac. Worst flopper ever.
. The problem is that officials refuse to call fouls unless you overreact to the contact.
Baby steps. After this,proper calls. And I agree with Bill: refs are going to miss flopping calls during the game, and after-game fouls solve that problem. The fines themselves may not be important, but the sanctioned reputation for flopping will be.
Here's a thought: fine the refs for calling obvious flops...
Every team has a flopper. Like my Lakers' own Derek Fisher. This is a stupid rule. When a player flops, he takes himself out of the defense and gives the offensive team a better opportunity to score. Stupid flopping is penalized enough by the resulting imbalance. Why enact a rule against it? Good flopping, on the other hand, only helps to sell a genuine foul to the refs, so there's no harm. Count me as someone who does not see flopping as a problem in need of a solution.
"There's a great Parker flop under the basket after a layup attempt, but I can't find it.
Tony Parker's theatrics are just appalling. He is somehow athletic and coordinated enough to cut through huge, quick defenders in traffic and make floaters and lay-ups against NBA quality defense. Yet somehow, just somehow, he always manages to flop to the hardwood like a brick and 'hit' his fucking head. And in case you somehow missed him 'hitting' his head, he'll rub it like he has a migraine all the way to the foul line.
It was funny when Longoria gave the game away during an interview, though.
The actress admits it's tough watching her husband play for the San Antonio Spurs - because she never knows when he's really hurt, and when he's acting. She says, "Sometimes he acts to get the flagrant foul or, to sell the foul more, he'll throw himself on the floor and really play it up more than what it is. "I really don't know what the difference is so I'm like, 'Stop laying on the ground if you're not hurt. Just get up!' He's like, 'Honey, I have to stay on the ground sometimes
http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2008/01/28/eva-longoria-admits-tony-parker-flops/
I'm all for fewer charges on drives to the hoop, when the defender comes in under the guy at the last minute, but I agree that there are too many blocking fouls called when the offensive player is dribbling and just runs into the defender. It seems like anytime there's contact, unless the defender is totally set and stationary, it's a blocking foul. That's not the rule -- the defender is entitled to his space, and he doesn't have to be stationary to draw a charge.
MPowell, are you the dude that runs poundingtherock.com?
ah, if only karl malone was still in the league. how a 6'8" 250+ lbs. man got "knocked down" so often i'll never understand. *sigh*
MPowell, are you the dude that runs poundingtherock.com?
No. Never heard of it.
So this isn't the worst idea ever, but they absolutely have to work on improving the officiating at the same time. Problem is, I have no faith in the league to do that. This is always their response: fine players, coaches first.
The underlying problem here is that:
- on many plays in a game, deciding whether a foul has occured is a difficult judgment call for even the best trained professionals
- the overall pattern of those calls within the game is very important for determining who wins and loses
The players are acting rationally in response to those incentives. The league needs to change the incentives by changing the foul rules to make most calls obvious. Until it does that, nothing will change the underlying dynamic.
Unfortunately the league won't do that. The key official (Stern) is not an ex-player, and a lot of the prominent ex-players became prominent just as the league was shifting away from Magic/Bird ball-movement-centric play to "Bad Boys"-90's Knicks hack-centric play. They like what they did well.
If the league did overhaul the rules to eliminate the 50/50 call as a tactical weapon, you'd see a lot of teams play the way the Nash-Marion Suns played: flow on offense, avoid fouls on defense. Many fans, including me, would love it.
Now they just need to redo the intentional foul rules to stop Hack-a-Shaq and 90's Knicks style defenses....
But ending flopping is a great start.
MPowell, are you the dude that runs poundingtherock.com?
Wow. Same name, though. And I live in Austin, not too far from SA. lol
I'm with MPowell.
Shaq made a career of smashing into defenders, time after time, until he was right under the basket, then shooting. The officials never called a charge, except when Vlade Divac flopped, and not always then (sometimes Shaq simply got a dunk).
That's hardly the only case. In fact, as long as the officials are allowing obvious charges as long as they are done with back to the basket, everyone should do it. And if they will only call an obvious charge when someone flops, everyone should flop.
I don't think this is the fault of the players. The effective rules of the game are what officials call.
When a defender has position between the offensive player and the basket, and the offensive player runs into him, I think it's a charge. I think that's what the rules say. But I'm not an NBA referee, so what I think (and what the rules say) doesn't really matter.
Now they just need to redo the intentional foul rules to stop Hack-a-Shaq
They considered it and rejected it, saying that they didn't want to make it easier for a player to hide his lack of free throw skill and stay on the court. I hate the tactic and hate what it does to the flow of the game, but I can see their point.
They are only going to fine the most egrarious flopping, so I guy like Fisher who only exaggerates actual contact is probably safe. They are going after the guys who will fling their heads back when no actual contact to their face occur. These are the players who's wallets might be a bit lighter next season other than Manu: Varajao, Iverson, Chris Paul, Rip Hamilton and Sasha Vujacic.
I third MPowell.
On Tuesday, Barkley (I think?) went so far as to say the questionable no-foul body-check on Barry at the buzzer wasn't called because "he didn't sell it." It's more pervasive than the babbling of Longoria indicates.
this is funny coming on the heels of a game in which barry didn't get a call because he didn't sell the foul (which is at least a variant of flopping). i don't like flopping, but agree with those who think the issues is refs failing to call fouls consistently (which incents players to flop).
Earth to Matt's replacement: Singling out Ginobili for flopping is a worn out meme, and it may have to do with who's wearing the gold medal from Athens 2004 and who's not. Even Kobe acknowledges greatness in Manu.Posted by Gino Manobili | May 29, 2008 1:22 PM
No, what's worn out is the ass of Manu's shorts where he keeps falling down every time someone looks at him crosseyed on the court.
Manu flops so much that he is starting to rub all the hair off the back of his head.
This is kinda related, because it occurs especially when Tony Parker or other players drive to the basket and get fouled or "get fouled."
Right under the basket, there's a lot of hard contact between players. Great big guys will go tumbling to the floor, often onto photographers seated on the floor or onto the first rows of spectators. This happens several times a game. Isn't that a hazard, placing all those people right where big guys routinely fall hard? Shouldn't that area have matting, to prevent injuries, instead of being filled with observers?
it is my (self)assigned role in these discussions to provide everyone a stroll down memory lane, to an article (sorry for those who have read this before) from the first issue of an SI subscription i received as an adolescent birthday gift from my parents, in which frank ramsey, the first of the great celtic sixth men, revealed all the basic tricks in flopping.
in 1963.
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075469/index.htm
As Al was the first to note, determining what is flopping is incredibly difficult and subjective, and certainly not done every time a soccer player flops. if it were an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved somewhere in the past 45 years....
I think the thing they have to do... and it's been said to death is call *traveling* The egregious traveling that goes on makes the defenders have to flop in order to compensate because the offensive player has too much of an advantage. If they really really cracked down on traveling I think the flopping would go away.
Good luck to the NBA- I wish FIFA and the other soccer authorities would make more of an effort to crack down on diving. Sure, sometimes they give out yellow cards for "simulation" but at this point diving has become an expected part of the game. Still, there's no reason why it has to be.
Rob,
Most of what people think is traveling is not. Players are very good at taking the maximum advantage that the rule allows (e.g. Lebron's jump stop in the lane is completely legal although it sure looks like it should be a travel).
Ricky B: the place where the yellow for 'simulation' has taken hold is in the penalty box when you get Olympic 9.5 quality diving. There's an obvious reason for that: you're either giving the penalty (and possibly showing a red card to the defender) or booking the diver. There's little room to do nothing.
As for basketball, Al's right: call blatant floppage as a technical, and call it early.
But the ongoing issue really is definitional: both association football and basketball can be described as 'non-contact sports with contact', with b-ball closer on the spectrum to non-contact than contact.
Manu gets a bad rap, the worst flopper in the NBA is Rip Hamilton - he's the classic crazy physical on d but call a foul if you touch him on the other end p**** that ruins many a regular pick up game.
Next you will want them to call travelling.
Comments closed June 12, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
This is evidence of blatant anti-European bias reaching the highest levels of the NBA.
Posted by some ass | May 29, 2008 12:48 PM