Stop The Flop
April 22, 2008 – 12:36 pm | by bryanIf you're new here, and you're into sports and/or the Christian faith, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The flop has got to stop.
It just has to.
Flopping is an integral part of the game in soccer, and I’m ok with that. But basketball? No, It can’t be allowed.
In soccer, your average penalty has little effect on the game. Players do not get penalized when the whistle blows, unless it’s for something flagrant demanding a yellow or red card. The team who gets possession of the ball will rarely score on the kick that results from the penalty because, well, teams in soccer rarely score.
But in basketball, fouls are extremely important. Because you’re limited to 6 per game, a couple of cheap ones early can mean the difference between your star player being on the floor and riding the pine. Though hockey comes close with its penalty box, no other sport is like this. No other sport puts a limit on minor rule violations that results in taking minutes away from players. Whether or not that should be changed is a whole other discussion, but for now, let’s get back to flopping.
If you saw the end of last night’s Rockets-Jazz game, you know why I am bringing this up today. Houston’s Bobby Jackson hit a game-tying 3 pointer in the waning moments of the game, only to have the points taken off the board because Luis Scola was called for a foul on Andrei Kirilenko. At first glance, it looked like Scola did commit the foul (because you are watching Jackson shoot, you only see the play out of the corner of your eye). Upon another glance, however, it is clear that Scola barely touches Kirilenko…and then Andrei flails about as if he’s been punched in the chest by Ed Hochuli and the Incredible Hulk at the same time.
Is flopping just a part of the game that fans, refs, and players are going to have to adjust to? I don’t think so. The NBA needs to put a stop to it, and I think they can. I don’t have a problem with a guy exaggerating a bit when he is taking a charge. What I’m talking about is the away-from-the-ball antics that sneaky players employ. They know the refs have their focus elsewhere, so they put on a huge show to force the ref to blow the whistle. I don’t care how corny it sounds…it’s just not in the spirit of the game.
If I was David Stern, I would put something in place to allow the league to penalize players for flopping. Take a stand to keep it from becoming a permanent part of the game. Let them know that all games will be reviewed for “flagrant flopping” and that it will be up to the league’s discretion to penalize players for it. First offense will result in a warning, second offense will result in a 1-game suspension, and so on. Define Flagrant Flopping as “a deliberate attempt by a player to deceive the referee into thinking a foul was committed when overwhelming evidence exists little or no contact was made”.
The only other good suggestion I’ve heard of is to charge the flopping player with a foul. In theory I like this notion, but I don’t think it would work well at the speed of an NBA game. You’d be forcing referees to make split-second decisions on whether or not Manu Ginobili just took an elbow to the chin, or if it missed him by 3 inches and he pretended to get clocked. That would be a tough call for a ref to make.
There needs to be some penalty to discourage players from flopping or it is going to continue happening, and if I’m David Stern, I would be very concerned about it. For a sport like the NBA, which is a distant third in popularity in this country, the little things that can be done to improve the game SHOULD be done. Players should be winning games with their basketball talent, like Manu Ginobili did in Game 1 of their series on Saturday, not with their acting talent, like Andrei Kirilenko did last night against the Houston Rockets.
MEMO TO DAVID STERN: Fans don’t tune in to playoff basketball to see sneaky players affect the outcome of games by pretending to be fouled away from the ball. And if you’re not careful, they will tune out because of it.
Tags: basketball, Flopping
9 Responses to “Stop The Flop”
By Jeff H on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
Flopping needs to stop in soccer, too. The English Premier League has vigorously distributed yellow cards for flopping and other European leagues would do well to follow suit.
What about assessing fouls to floppers? That evens the up the penalty and makes it akin to charging on the offensive side of basketball.
By Aaron on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
Bryan,
One minor thing: the hockey penalty is a far greater penalty than the foul (IMO) because the team with a PP has roughly a 20% chance of scoring 25-100% of their offensive output for the game.
My larger point, as Jeff H. alluded to, is assessing a foul. Hockey has an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for discernible flopping. It is not assessed often due to the difficult of judging acting (as you said with this potential solution for the NBA), but I think the mere possibility of it would be an adequate (not absolute) solution. In hockey, I would guess flopping is either ignored by the ref or assessed unsportsmanlike conduct 20% of the time it actually occurs. I think the “deterrent” effect would be the best the league could do and would make enough of a change to rid the egregious scenarios.
As it stands now, the refs have to call nothing or a foul on the “flopee.” I’m sure refs do not want to take the chance of missing what appears to be an obvious foul over doing nothing at all. Finally, I think this change would be more accurately enforced in the NBA than the NHL because all three refs can call fouls (only the referee can call penalties in the NHL, but not the linesmen). At the same time, the three refs are much closer physically to the action than one referee roaming the ice.
By bryan on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
good thoughts guys…my only problem with giving the refs the ability to call a foul on the flopper is that in many cases, the refs dont see it. Either it occurs away from the ball and only appears in the refs peripheral vision, or their view is blocked, and they can’t tell exactly what happened.
that’s why i think the league should have the option to assess a penalty after reviewing game tape. i know it sounds extreme, but if you really want this crap out of the game, you need to take extreme measures. and i think if you give refs the ability to call a foul (or a technical foul) on the flopper as well, then we might be getting somewhere.
By Aaron on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
I didn’t see the end of the game last night so I’m not sure what it looked like, but I thought the three refs each had their own areas of the court to focus on, rather than the ball. I guess that makes it all the harder to understand why they couldn’t see it was a flop to begin with.
By Christian on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
They’ve also got to fix the “Kobe Offensive Flop” where he drives, has the ball taken away and he throws his arms in the air screaming like he just got assaulted. Though I love Laimbeer, I hate that he made an art of the flop.
By Dan Gibson on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
Using Ginobili as an alternative in an anti-flopping piece is a delightful bit of irony.
By buddy watts on Apr 25, 2008 | Reply
Stop the flop,,,,what about Hack a Shack??
By Peter Gaultney on May 8, 2008 | Reply
I have to agree with Jeff H. - it really needs to stop in soccer, too. If you’ve ever played soccer at even a reasonably high level, you’ve seen it, and it’s incredibly annoying. Personally, it disturbs me if a foul gets called on someone who has caused ME to go flying, when what that player did was perfectly legal. It happens. But intentionally flopping….it really kills soccer too. And there *has* been a crackdown on it recently, which has been nice.