I think this is a very tricky issue to deal with practically. Like many things legislated, the intention here is a good one, but I think we are all in for alot of disappointment in the way this will play out. It is extremely subjective as to what one considers "flopping" and can be interpreted differently by different people. I think the league will have a very hard time parsing hairs to determine this. It seems many are confusing flopping with how much a player exaggerates the extent the actual contact had in realistically knocking a guy off his feet and 20 ft. backwards. Outright, faking, acting, etc. as people have called it, would be actually falling in a case where there was no contact whatsoever, not an exaggeration of the severity of impact.
Even in the YouTube videos in this post, esp in the Boozer/Horry play, Boozer did extend his arm to
ward off Horry, but Horry's falling was extreme in comparison to the amount of contact. Is that flopping? How do we know that the ref was not simply calling the push as a foul, not because Horry fell 10 feet backwards, but because there was actual contact even if not bonecrushing enough to send Horry sprawling? A foul does not have to be something that destroys a player for it to be a foul. There may legitimately have been contact, I think it gets dicey trying to judge the extent of one's exaggeration to contact, especially when most times, that exaggeration is precisely what gets the player the call.
I think there should be more onus on referees to determine when contact is significant or not. People have stated here that Leon is a flopper, a testament I believe to not understanding what flopping is. Leon is simply practicing what is soundly taught at all levels of basketball and is not flopping. He is just demonstrating or highlighting that he got to the spot, and his feet were set when the offensive player ran into him. If one just stumbles backwards when sliding over to help, he will rarely, if ever, get the call. But if the defender falls straight back sliding onto his butt, not lifting his feet from the established position, sort of like a pivot foot on offense, it helps reveal/show the ref the position had been established before contact.
I don't consider falling after contact, even falling as if having been hit by a truck, to be flopping, it is up to the officials again, to determine what contact constitutes a foul or not and not be fooled, to ask the players to not highlight actual contact or fear getting a flopping fine, will make them less likely to correctly highlight contact. Falling after contact, is really not much different than Varitek framing a pitch, to make it appear to be as close to a strike as possible. Again, it is taught as a way to help the umpire better see a borderline pitch, should Varitek get fined on pitches deemed later to have been clear balls for trying to make them appear to be strikes? Or will the ump not buying the frame attempt take care of the problem?
Flopping/exaggerating has gotten so out of hand precisely because refs have bought into it way too often, improving the quality of the officiating will also then drive the players' behavior in the opposite direction. This is a feeble attempt by the league to address a problem fans and writers have been complaining about for awhile now, the real answer lies in improving officiating, and everyone knows it. Directing the punishment for the practice at players is absurd, they are only adjusting/acclimating to what works, if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Unfortunately, Stern still does not see the officiating as a problem, even after one of his officials was caught gambling and providing others tips on how to gamble based on who was officiating that night. He hopes to pacify the outcry concerning flopping, without doing anything substantively to improve the actual problem which is how officials call it.
Topic: Fines will be imposed for clear cases of flopping next season (Read 12990 times)