Should NBA Players Be Fined/Suspended/Otherwise Punished For Flopping?
ESPN – It’s award season in the NBA but commissioner David Stern is concerned his league may be veering too close to handing out Oscars. During Sunday’s Eastern Conference semifinal opener between the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers, Stern was asked what he thought about comments made by Pacers coach Frank Vogel in regards to what Vogel considered the Heat’s tendency to flop. “(Vogel) didn’t have a beef; he was just manipulating the refereeing or trying to,” Stern said. “I would have fined him much more than our office did.” While Stern chastised Vogel for on Thursday calling the Heat “the biggest flopping team in the NBA,” he did intimate that he sees merit in the sentiment. “I think it’s time to look at (flopping) in a more serious way,” Stern said, “because it’s only designed to fool the referee. It’s not a legitimate play in my judgment. I recognize if there’s contact (you) move a little bit, but some of this is acting. We should give out Oscars rather than MVP trophies.”
Stern’s comments are interesting; never heard the head of a league come out against gamesmanship/flopping before. It’s refreshing and surprising, especially coming from David Stern. Stern, by personality standards, is a colossal dickhole. But David Stern the commissioner cleaned up the NBA’s once horrid drug problem, found a way to make a sport filled with urban blacks appealing to middle-class whites, and in many ways turned the league into the envy of the international community. Now with butter-soft Euro players and 3-time MVP’s faking fouls left and right, is ridding the league of flopping the next logical step?
Personally, I’d love to see some sort of fine system initiated for flopping. Suspension seems too severe and while taking away a foul call or reversing a call based on a flop might be the least severe, asking refs to separate falls from flops might have too big of an impact on the outcome of the game. Fining guys is a happy medium where injury fakers like LeBron would not only lose a bit of money for their tactics, but more importantly face the public shame of their Flop Fine being on Sportscenter for a week straight. Would it be hard to regulate? Yes. But this might be the only way to stop American sports from devolving into soccer’s ridiculous cart-me-off-the-pitch-with-a-cramp flop-happy vaginal mentality.
What are your thoughts? Should the NBA punish floppers?
Vote 1 for No and 10 for Yes.
(183 votes, average: 9.39 out of 10)
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For a while there in the NHL they started calling diving often enough that the emerging trend stopped right there. In hoops it’s a different story, they’ve let it go for so long it might take a few years to get it straight. Still, they should absolutely make flopping a technical foul, it could only help the game.
They should be fined and assessed a technical.
If they do a good job at spotting it, like the NHL does, then yes it should also be a foul. They should be able to review it like flagrant 1 vs Flagrant 2. I think flopping should be a Flagrant 1. That way, if you flop twice in one game, hit the showers.
There’s just no practical way for refs to spot fouls during a game, reviewing every charge/flop would make watching the first 36 minutes or so of a basketball game even more grueling. Appointing a guy to review all the possible flops the next day and let him hand out fines would be perfect to me. Like Mo said, the shame that would come with it would be the real deterrent. Technicals seem a bit much to me, but I could be convinced otherwise for blatant flops.
They should fine the players. However, they would need to develop some sort of a pro-rated system based on a player’s salary. Or they could just implement a system similar to the one used in NCAA football. But instead of placing stickers on player’s helmets for accomplishments, they could sew little pink pussies onto Lebron’s ( and other players’) jerseys for each flop. Whoever accumulates the most pink pussy patches by the end of the year would then be suspended for the entire next season.
I retract my suggestion, and second his^ idea.
Stern created the flop culture. In an effort to control player confrontation on the court, he’s made just about any sort of player to player contact a foul and the referees have quick whistles. NBA players are just taking advantage of this. If the refs see anyone flailing around, they assume a foul has been committed and call it. Its awful. There is no more “let the guys play.” It is such a controlled environment that the flops will continue.
I blame Duke for all of this. They’ve run a drama club instead of a bball program for so long that players who have come up through the ranks watching them view flopping as a legitimate part of defense. I say the fine system Mo brings up is probably the most realistic, but whatever happened to opposing players policing this? It used to be that If you pulled this flopping shit against teams in the late 80′s and early ’90′s, a guy like Rick Mahorn made sure you earned the next foul/charge and ended up in the 3rd row behind the baseline. I guess now the players figure they’ll just flop later in the game and even it all out. In a just world, the ref would call flopping and the league would force the player to play the rest of the game in a dress with a sash that said “Best Actress”.
I know at at the high school and college levels, if a referee calls you for flopping you’re given a technical foul, NBA should do the same
and @achart they don’t need to review it, every call in the league is a judgement call, if they think a player flopped, T him up
lets get Stern’s dick out of your mouth, Mo. Bird and Magic (and later Jordan) were the reason the NBA’s popularity shot up in the 80s and 90s (and then internationally with original dream team @ the olympics). Stern has done nothing but pussify the sport, give superstars more preferential treatment, refused to answer the infinite number of questionable (at best, at worst criminal) decisions by his horrible officials, and he’s marketed superstars above teams which is why in three or four years they’ll be 5 “super teams” and a whole mess of shitty Charlotte-Bobcats-clone teams. For many what this league has become is unwatchable garbage. You can say the ratings are up, revenue is high blah blah. that doesnt mean the sport is better at all. fuck, the kardashian cunts are the most worthless whores on the planet and their show is wildly popular and they just got like $30mil to do another season.
League should be fined for Flopping.
breezey, how was mo at all sucking stern’s dick? by calling him a colossal dickhole? do everyone a favor and go fuck a cactus you douche
@winning1 – learn to fucking read shithead: “But David Stern the commissioner cleaned up the NBA’s once horrid drug problem, found a way to make a sport filled with urban blacks appealing to middle-class whites, and in many ways turned the league into the envy of the international community.” yeah he came out and called him a dickhole for the obvious things that everyone calls him a dickhole for. my point is he is basically crediting stern for turning this league from the coke-fueled pick-up league in the late 70s to the billion$basketball empire it is today when in reality it was the players who did that and virtually everything he did/didnt do has ruined the sport. go fuck yourself idiot.
fines don’t mean shit. If a play is a questionable flop. review it and asses a technical. 1 foul shot plus the ball.
Flopping will stop pretty quick. It ruins the game. Whether lerbron knows it or not, but his flopping mentality is what is making him suck in big time spots. Its a mentality and it rears its ugly head when it counts the most.
Iv never understood why the jumptron and at home can have near second instant replay but the dickhole refs take 10 minutes.