After years of complaints and refs and players being exposed online, the NBA has finally decided to crack down on flopping.
The new anti-flopping rules will allow the refs to call fouls on players who flop, with the rival team taking a free throw.
They don’t necessarily need to stop play to call the foul, and those fouls won’t count for ejections for technical fouls or personal fouls, and we already saw this rule in effect during the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Summer League clash vs. the Memphis Grizzlies.
A player got a called for flopping after over-exaggerating an elbow to the face, which is why NBA analyst Nick Wright doesn’t like this new rule at all.
“It’s a terrible rule. We are now going to judge not whether you did or didn’t get hit, but whether you did or didn’t over-exaggerate the impact of the hit.”
— @getnickwright on the NBA’s new flopping rule pic.twitter.com/2IzhGsuWUP
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) July 6, 2023
Per Wright, the matter of the fact won’t be whether a player got fouled or not but whether he oversold the contact.
Wright cited that the Grizzlies player should’ve been called for an offensive foul because he did — in fact — hit the other with the elbow.
However, the elbowed guy was the one punished because he overreacted to the slight contact.
This is a valid point, and it’s obvious that all rules will have their blemishes and gray areas.
It might take a while before referees and the league effectively crack down and develop legit and objective criteria about what should and shouldn’t be punished.
Obviously, the flopping shouldn’t be penalized over the offensive foul, but human error is a part of the game we’ll have to live with until the end of time.
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