What ever happened to the NBA’s Flopping Fine?

By Mark Mills

The Spurs are officially going in to the second round and with that we have to endure another round of Manu Ginobli’s gut-renching flailing, flopping, and just overall ridiculousness. The Cavs are looking pretty good and you know what that means? Another month of Anderson Varejao getting constantly knocked down by the wind. And the Oscar goes to…..

Whenever possible I go right to the source, and this is certainly no exception. Here is what the highly credible (as far a whining goes) Rasheed Wallace said about flopping,

"All that bullsh**-a** calls they had out there. With Mike [Callahan] and Kenny [Mauer] — you've all seen that sh**. You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that sh**. That sh** ain't basketball out there. It's all f***ing entertainment. You all should know that sh**. It's all f***ing entertainment.”

Well said. Thank you Mr. Wallace.

We all feel that way about floppers. Even on my absolute favorite team I can’t stand when Andrei Kirilenko gets hit by Casper’s invisible fireball. And don’t even get me started on Divac, I might just club a baby seal if I ever see that guy suit up again.

The NBA back in May of 2008 said it would start to impose fines on players who clearly flopped.

So has anyone been fined for flopping in the NBA? Not that I could find. I searched up and down and I couldn’t find one instance of a NBA player getting fined for flopping. Maybe the NBA is trying to hide these under-the-table mysterious flopping fines. What I did find is that Rasheed Wallace got fined $30,000 for complaining after a game this year when he thought Hedo Turkoglu flopped, this is what he said:

"They've got to know that he's a da** flopper That's all Turkododo do. Flopping shouldn't get you nowhere. He acts like I shot him. ... That's not basketball, man. That's not defense. That's garbage, what it is. I'm glad I don't have too much of it left."

Another solid quote from the expert on referee missed calls. I hate to sound like I am defending Rasheed Wallace for crying out loud (literally), but to get fined for that comment seems like Stern is a little sensitive about the issue. So it looks like the NBA is not actually fining anyone for flopping, but for complaining about flopping.

The NBA playoffs are among us and flopping is in full force. I wouldn’t be surprised that some actor, I mean NBA player ends up effecting the game over some flopping antics. Will he get fined? Probably not, just don’t complain about it.

Let me say right now that almost all players sell a foul a bit at times to get a call, but I’m talking about blatant falling down and over-dramatizing just to get a cheap call on another player.

'Memo to Stern' it’s time to stop policing what everyone is saying and Tweeting about and start fining these guys for flopping. The hard part of fining a player for flopping it is so hard to tell if they did actually flop. In clear cases where a player blatantly throws himself to the ground according to the NBA rules a fine is in order. The NBA would then basically turn into the Academy Awards fining those who couldn’t sell their foul as well as others.

If the NBA didn’t think they could determine a flop why did they make the rule? So this basically comes down to the fact that the NBA and its fans were sick of floppers and wanted to do something about it. So, the NBA decided to just threat players with a fine and see if anything would change. Not surprisingly a hollow threat has not changed anything.

If you need any further examples just watch a Cavs or Spurs game. I would hate to have a few lame floppers help determine the outcome of a series.