NBA competition committee discusses postgame flopping penalties

By Eric Freeman | Ball Don't Lie

To some NBA fans, flopping is a scourge upon the NBA. Like pump-faking or playing with other superstars, it degrades the ideals of competition on which sport is founded. If the NBA wants to be taken seriously and move beyond record ratings, they must do something drastic.

Luckily, David Stern and his handpicked competition committee are meeting this week to discuss potential fixes. On Monday, they talked specifically about how to hand out punishments after games. From Brian Mahoney for the Associated Press:

The NBA commissioner believes too many players are deceiving referees into calling fouls by falling down, or flopping. So he and the league's newly reformed competition committee met Monday for a discussion about how it can be prevented.

One option, Stern said, is a ''postgame analysis'' in which a player could be penalized if it was determined he flopped. The league retroactively upgrades or downgrades flagrant fouls after review, and along those lines he said that perhaps a player could receive a message from New York saying: ''Greetings from the league office. You have been assigned flopper status.''

''No, I'm joking, but something like that,'' Stern said. ''That sort of lets people know that it's not enough to say 'it's all part of the game.'''


My own joking aside, it would be good if the league could crack down on flopping. I'm not convinced that it's a major issue for the NBA, but it'd be best if it weren't so prevalent. On the other hand, the postgame plan helps underline exactly why it will be hard to stop flopping.

Under this proposal, one man (perhaps suspension/fine czar Stu Jackson) would have to assess all questionable flopping instances on any night. But if flopping is as common as some believe, then that would be a time-consuming process, particularly on nights with 10 or more games. Can a centralized situation do that much work? Would the league have to enforce selectively to make it manageable? Is that fair?

On top of that issue, the entire use of flopping is that it makes the intentional look unintentional. Even when divorced from the clamor of in-game officiating, assessing a charging or blocking foul for intent is a tricky task. Can we really know if a player meant to fall? What should we make of situations where there is legitimate foul-worthy contact and embellishment? Where do they draw the line? If players are allowed to appeal flopping rulings (which seems necessary, especially for this type of transgressions), then we could see arguments over intent usually kept to courtrooms and theological conferences.

In this case, the solution to the War on Flopping might prove much more controversial and difficult to rein in than the crime itself. The NBA and its fans have every right to cry foul over flopping, but they'd do well to consider the unintended consequences of enforcement.

One of the comments below the article goes as follows:

From Jeremiah in Alexandria, VA:

My thought is that the offensive foul should no longer be a personal foul, but only be a turnover. I think that would highly discourage folks from flopping to draw offensive fouls, because the reward is diminished, i.e. you'd have to risk a foul on yourself, with no chance of a personal foul being charged to the offensive player.
I think the flop is used as a weapon against elite offensive players and this change would eliminate that.

Thoughts?

gyso

Hi,
As I suggested on BDC, they should've tried to change the way the officials in the NBA operate. You know, clean your own house first...

AK

This is a tough one, much tougher than it would appear to be at first glance.

The first question: how significant is the issue of flopping? I personally detest it in all its various forms (offensive and defensive), and I'd like to see something done about it. I think its use has increased to the point that it detracts significantly from the game, and it has become an accepted strategy.

Freeman correctly points out the difficulties of post-game enforcement. I've always felt it needs to be dealt with during the game, perhaps by a fourth official like the replay official in the NFL. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than the post-game edict, followed by the inevitable appeal. If it's dealt with during the game, the penalty applies to the game in which it occurs, and there's no appeal process (or at least a limited one) because decisions by referees during the game are final.

I think the comment from Jeremiah is interesting, but it only deals with defensive flopping, and a LOT of flopping occurs at the offensive end. For some players, it's as simple as falling down after a shot, whether there is contact or not (I think Dwayne Wade's normal shot process is aim, release, fall) or whether the contact made the player fall (falling down after getting bumped on the arm, for example). Others flail their arms and/or head at minor contact in order to draw a foul.

There are two problematic areas. One, as pointed out by Freeman's article, is the mechanics of enforcement and the huge effort required to review and render decisions on all the action that occurs during the game. But another one is nuance. In college, we were taught to take a charge, and part of it was to put your weight back on your heels so that any bump would knock you over. It's not a pure flop -- falling down when there's no contact or when the contact wouldn't make you fall -- because it requires the offensive player to knock you over. But it's the type of play that presents difficulties. Is it a flop at all? I'd say no, but others may say yes. If it is a flop, does it rise to the level of retroactive punishment?

There are other questions. How bad does the flop have to be for the Flop Ref or Flop Commissioner to call you on it? What should the penalty be? Will there be different grades of flopping like we have for flagrant fouls?

I don't have good answers for those questions. What I do know is that the current system has extremely few disincentives for flopping and a lot of incentive. If flopping gets extra fouls called on your opponent, you get extra free throws, the opponent may get into the penalty sooner, and key players may have to sit out due to fouls. Plus, if you don't do it and your opponent does, your opponent has an advantage before you step on the court, so you better start flopping, too. That's a lot of incentive to flop.

The only disincentives I see are that if you fall and a foul isn't called, you're out of position, and if you get a reputation as a flopper, refs theoretically will not give you the call even when you deserve it because they thought you flopped when you actually got fouled (though I still see serial floppers rewarded, so I don't know how much that happens). That's not much disincentive against flopping.

The best answer may not be a cumbersome Flop Ref or Flop Commissioner, but instead some tweak to the rules that changes the balance to make flopping less of an advantage and more of a disadvantage. That will be extremely hard to do for offensive flopping. And, to me, the biggest problem is offensive flopping.

Outside

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
As I suggested on BDC, they should've tried to change the way the officials in the NBA operate. You know, clean your own house first...

AK

Sinus,

The NBA has many more younger referees now then they did 10 years ago.
What makes you think that new referees will solve the referee problem?
Adding more replays or a coaches challenge will go a long way to getting the calls correct.

Outside

Agree this is an issue but as you say there really is no answer, at least no cut and dried simple one.

One small aspect of the so called flop that might be able to be addressed is how many times do we see an elbow that does NOT make contact with the opponent yet the person "hit" flings away from the "contact" as if they were shot and a foul awarded. Perhaps a replay might clearly show there was no contact therefore no foul committed. Should not take long to check and if the player intentionally acted to attempt to deceive the ref make it a tech and a personal foul award 2 shots and the ball to the other team. If it happens again to that team the next player is tossed perhaps. Might then think twice about faking a "hit".

As far as the charge-block and the acting on offense if there is a little contact those are not simple ones to handle during the playing of the game, really can't stop it and review everything in question.

If the rules were truly called as intended carries, travels, 3 seconds would be called on nearly every trip. So throwing in the judgement of did he act out of the ordinary or was that enough contact to actually knock him down present another entire level of calls that the refs would have to consider and lord knows they have problems enough already.

During the game at hand is the ideal time to enforce this (flop situation)but realistically even an after game review and next game penalty of some sort for the offending player is better than nothing. If they know they would be fined or face some sort of consequence the acting would slow down. Just imagine if it was deemed I intentionally drew a whistle yet replays later showed there was no or not enough contact to justify my "act" and I was suspended the next game........... how long before these actions would be cleaned up???

Again there is no good answer and I really don't even like my suggestions but I also can't stand to see players get away with bogus calls, that is not the way the game was meant to be played.

beat

I agree with Outside that flopping from offensive players is as bad or worse then it is from defensive players.

I think the NBA should review the games and fine or penalize players after the game for flops or blatant exaggerations.

To reduce the amount of charge/block calls referees have to make, maybe the NBA should move the 1/2 circle out an additional 18 inches toward the free throw line.
This way the refs won't have to decide nearly as often if the offensive player was in the air before the defensive player had his feet and body set.

Changing an offensive foul to a turnover is a TERRIBLE idea...that would further discourage anyone from playing defense. Flops should be a personal foul that equals 2 shots plus the ball for the opponent.

Some other changes that need to happen:

The restricted area needs to be increase in size....to include the entire paint area below the dotted circle.

The NBA needs to enforce traveling calls. Lebron, Westbrook, Harden, Wade....these guys take 3 steps on a regular basis. Same with carrying the Ball. Kevin Durant's patterned step back move involves him carrying the ball from one side of his body to the other, dribbling it again - and then taking a step back shot. This will NEVER happen, but as long as people are allowed to run toward the basket, the defense will never be on a level playing field.

Need to also change the travel call on going to the floor with the ball to the same as HS and College. If you fall to the floor with the ball...that is a travel. If you roll around trying to get a timeout called, that is a travel.

24 shot clock violations need to be waved off if the other team has possession. Too many fast breaks are killed by this terrible rule.

None of these will happen...as Stern has no interest in calling the game fairly...only making bigger and bigger superstars - and selling more t-shirts, tickets, tv contracts. But they should as the current NBA game is so disparate to the game we all grew up playing and watching, it is disgraceful.

I forgot to provide the link. Here it is:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/nba-competition-committee-discusses-post-game-flopping-penalties-002054016--nba.html

tjmakz wrote:

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
As I suggested on BDC, they should've tried to change the way the officials in the NBA operate. You know, clean your own house first...

AK

Sinus,

The NBA has many more younger referees now then they did 10 years ago.
What makes you think that new referees will solve the referee problem?
Adding more replays or a coaches challenge will go a long way to getting the calls correct.

TJ,
I'm not talking about referees (young or old) solving the officiating problems. I'm talking about NBA should solve glaring, chronic problem, such as officiating, first and then go and rearrange proverbial chairs.
All this hoopla about flopping is nice and peachy but what good will it do (if or when they implement it) if the fundamentals of the NBA officiating are corrupt.

AK

sinus,

Saying the fundamentals of the NBA officiating are corrupt is a very general statement.

Do you think that the referees are individually corrupt?

TJ,
You're right - it was a very general statement. But I hope you got the gist of my posts on the topic.

I'm really upset. The flopping existed for decades, once in a while some media outlets mentioned about it. That's it. Now, all of a sudden, it's a problem #1 in NBA. Kind of fishy, IMO.
As for your question, I'm pretty sure that some of the ref are corrupt.

AK

Maybe they should review traveling non-calls too? No, that would upset LBJ and they surely don't want to do that...

Seriously, this is kind of weird. It's one thing to review a specific call and determine if it was appropriate. It's another to look to see if a call should have been made but wasn't.


The NBA is considering a "postgame analysis" to penalize players for flopping, according to David Stern.

The NBA already reviews flagrant fouls to determine if its ruling should be upgraded or downgraded.

The competition committee met on Monday to discuss ways in which excessive flopping can be prevented.

Via Brian Mahoney/Associated Press

Bob,

The point of clamping down on the flopping is because the job of the referees is now so much harder because of the flopping/acting that goes on.

I am glad the NBA changed a rule this year and stopped allowing the automatic shooting foul against a defender when the offensive player comes under the defenders out-stretched arms, just to get to the free throw line.

I hope Stern does figure out a way to punish floppers.

I hope the NBA does not implement one of Stern's pet goals which is to make the NBA goaltending rule the same as the International rule.
He is going to push hard to make that change for the 2012-13 season.

tj,

What is the international goaltending rule and how is it different than the NBA rule?

Just curious, I don't know the difference.

gyso

gyso wrote:tj,

What is the international goaltending rule and how is it different than the NBA rule?

Just curious, I don't know the difference.

gyso

gyso,

For one thing, there is no basket-interference call. In other words, a player can either dunk a ball in, or swat the ball away, while it is directly over the cylinder.

In a sport where pretty much everybody can get above the rim, I think this would be a ridiculous rule.

bob

.

Gyso,

Not to steal TJ's thunder, but my understanding of the international rule is that once the ball hits the rim, you can touch it, even if it's in the cylinder. That means that once the ball hits the rim, an offensive player can dunk or tap it back in and a defensive player can rebound it or knock it away. It gets rid of that whole "in the cylinder" thing.

Outside

Thanks bob and outside. That goes to show, you can teach an old dog new tricks!!

gyso

I'm probably off base on my opinion about flopping so fire away to straighten me out. I see "taking a charge" as an act commited during a play with a charge- block potential. Now intent to deceive by a player results in the term of "flopping". But since the deciding issue is one of positioning I would think that the official would have had to determine the call before the flop, rendering the flop irrelevant. Certainly the block- charge call is one of the most difficult calls with even the possibility of a tie occuring.
Perhaps this is an area where many hours of specialized training would enable the officials to always make the call independant of the flop. If floping does not have any affect on an officials decission,then whats the big deal.In football punters flop and in baseball batters flop.

swish

gyso wrote:tj,

What is the international goaltending rule and how is it different than the NBA rule?

Just curious, I don't know the difference.

gyso

gyso,

I'm sorry I didn't respond.
Have been away from computer for a while.
Bob and Outside summed up the goaltending differences quite well.

TJ

Thats exactly what we need....giving over even MORE discretion to the NBA Refs. LOL.

swish wrote:I'm probably off base on my opinion about flopping so fire away to straighten me out. I see "taking a charge" as an act commited during a play with a charge- block potential. Now intent to deceive by a player results in the term of "flopping". But since the deciding issue is one of positioning I would think that the official would have had to determine the call before the flop, rendering the flop irrelevant. Certainly the block- charge call is one of the most difficult calls with even the possibility of a tie occuring.
Perhaps this is an area where many hours of specialized training would enable the officials to always make the call independant of the flop. If floping does not have any affect on an officials decission,then whats the big deal.In football punters flop and in baseball batters flop.

swish

Swish,
The charge/block call is the most notorious situation involving flopping, but it is only one of many. Flopping can occur pretty much anywhere two opposing players are in proximity.

As to your question about whether flopping is a moot point because positioning determines the charge/block call, that's only partially true. If the defender doesn't have position, then yes, it's a moot point. But if the defender does have position and then falls down in an exaggerated fashion even when there is no or (more typically) incidental contact, then the flopping action by the defender may get the ref to call a foul when there in fact wasn't one. Just do a YouTube search on NBA flops and you'll see some of the greatest actors of our time, often getting the benefit of the call.

And yes, you are correct that football punters flop and baseball players fake being hit by a pitch. This kind of crap is often called "gamesmanship," but you can tie a nice bow of a word on it and it's still crap. If the league in question can't eliminate it and keeps rewarding this behavior at a high enough rate, then floppers will keep flopping, and you're putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't flop, too. The problem is exponentially worse in basketball because there are exponentially more opportunities to sway a referee by flopping in a basketball game. In football, a punter is instructed to fall if anyone comes near him, but that scenario happens rarely, and I believe there is an official dedicated to watching the punter for any contact, and I rarely see true flops rewarded. Mostly, the flop is ignored, or if there is actual contact, it's a five-yard "running into the kicker" penalty, which is justified because you can't touch the punter. In baseball, Derek Jeter's epic fake last season notwithstanding, the number of times a player fakes getting hit by a pitch and is rewarded is infinitesimally small.

In basketball, it happens multiple times every game, including the game last night.

-- Derek Fisher runs into LeBron, LeBron falls down and gets two free throws. Fisher did hit him, but it was funny the way Fisher looked at him afterward because there's no way Fisher's contact makes a guy LeBron's size go flying. (Considering all the flops Fisher has pulled, he should've given LeBron a look of admiration.)

-- Dwayne Wade, on multiple occasions, drove to the hoop, flailed and fell, and got the call, even when there wasn't contact to justify the call. He does this all the time, multiple times each game. It's a regular part of any Dwayne Wade drive with at least one defender anywhere near him. It's actually incredibly athletic the way he makes a difficult driving layup, often while forcing himself into an off-balance position at the finish in order to draw the foul. He gets rewarded multiple times a game, as he did last night.

I'm sure there were others. But these didn't involve charge/block, and they are an example of how flopping is far more pervasive in basketball than other sports.

Outside

Dave Cowens Didn't Like Flopping
Cowens thought a player who flopped to the court to draw a charge was the worst kind of cheat. So he once flattened Houston Rockets guard Mike Newlin in a violent but poignant demonstration. Newlin was a master of the flop. Twice in a game in 1976, Newlin drew charges on Cowens this way. So later in the game, an irate Cowens sprinted at Newlin, slamming him blind-side with both forearms and splattering Newlin along the floor.

``Now that's a FU**ING foul!'' Cowens told referee Bill Jones.

Cowens was branded a savage for that stunt, so he followed it up with a lengthy letter to the editor in the Boston Globe. Cowens wrote that ``fraudulent, deceiving and flagrant acts of pretending to be fouled when little or no contact is made is just as unsportsmanlike as knocking a player to the floor. ... This, in plain words, is what I call `cheating.'" Cowens forwarded copies of the letter to the NBA's supervisor of officials and Newlin. Newlin already got the message; he said Cowens' body-block still stung a month later.

Think we all remember this....

beat

mrkleen09 wrote:Thats exactly what we need....giving over even MORE discretion to the NBA Refs. LOL.

This is as good an argument as there is against doing anything additional about flopping. The game is already the toughest one to call, and there often is contact on the plays in question, so fans of the flopper's team will throw up their hands and say the game is rigged if they don't get the call, and fans of the other guy's team will do the same if they don't get the call.

The problem is that the NBA refs already have this discretion. They are already forced to make judgment calls on whether something is a flop or a foul.

I don't have a great solution, but I'm all for giving refs additional tools to help them call these plays correctly, because they get a lot of these calls wrong now. That would take away much of the incentive to flop. It would also help to increase the disincentives to flop, because there's hardly any now.

All of this is a BIG FACADE by the NBA....which will do nothing to address the superstars of the game who engage in this behavior on a nightly basis.

Does anyone here REALLY think they are going to call "flop" fouls on Lebron or Kobe or Wade?

What will happen is they will make a big, grandstanding effort to show how they are reforming the NBA rules and officiating. And in the end, only people like Kendrick Perkins, Glen Davis and Greg Steimsma will be effected.

These guys, who actually play hard and draw charges - will be negated by this BS new flopping rule. While Carmello and Wade and Harden continue to flop all over the court with impunity.

Here is a piece that is 6 years old..
last part is a bit about floping.

beat

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070516

And a You tube of some great floppers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cpPgxaBtSA0#!