Giving Technical Fouls To Flopping is a Massive Mistake for the NBA

There are new rule changes coming to the 2023-24 NBA season including penalizing players who flop by awarding the other team a technical foul free throw.

Just in: The NBA Board of Governors has approved two new gameplay changes for the 2023-24 season, per sources:

– In-game penalty for flops resulting in technical foul free throw
– A second coach’s challenge awarded if first challenge is successful

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 11, 2023

Let’s chat about flopping.

Flopping is a tool players use to manipulate the refs into calling fouls in the players’ favor and penalizing their opponents for playing over-aggressively or reaching in or being too handsy.

For a sports organization creating meaningless midseason tournaments to emulate what international soccer leagues do, the NBA is pretending like the biggest soccer stars in the world aren’t constantly flopping on the ground every single chance they get.

It’s part of the gamesmanship.

Now, there are certainly players who take flopping too far and ruin the viewing experience.

Guys like Marcus Smart and Kyle Lowry spend most of the games laying prone on the floor trying to bait the refs into stopping the game and calling fouls.

Marcus Smart flopping again 🤣 pic.twitter.com/OZjREpr2pf

— And then, Homer told Bart, don’t be a Simp, son (@November_3rd) April 26, 2022

Flopping pro:

Kyle Lowry pic.twitter.com/g7hMdrSM8Z

— Hoops ON Tap (@BasketballONTap) December 6, 2019

These players are infuriating to watch.

I’ll never forgive Kyle Lowry 1.) making an All-Star team and 2.) trying to draw a charge in the All-Star game.

Absolute loser. Kick him out of the NBA.

But there shouldn’t be mass flopping incarceration because a handful of players abuse it.

I refuse to live in this police state where we give referees even more power to manipulate and influence the game.

Prior to the 2012-13 season, the NBA gave out fines if they deemed a player had flopped in a game.

The decision wasn’t given to the referees mid-game to attempt to determine how hard a player was hit or not as a game is going on.

The referees have enough on their plate and make far too many mistakes already without handing them more responsibilities and more opportunities to fail.

Plus, this new NBA flopping rule is being added to the game at the same time as coaches are getting a second challenge which means if a coach doesn’t like the ref’s flop call, they now have an extra challenge to ask the refs to review the flop call and games are going to take so long before they end.

As baseball introduces a new pitch clock that has significantly cut the runtime of their games while the NBA just accidentally turned their games into 4-hour marathons.

The NBA should be doing everything it can to take power out of the referee’s hands.

There is nothing more annoying than a game’s narrative being completely about the job the refs did and nothing actually related to the players and their performances.

So how should the NBA handle flopping?

First, I want to repeat I have no real problem with flopping.

Drawing fouls in this league is an art form.

If it was so easy to get foul calls by simply flopping around then more players would succeed at it.

But if the NBA truly wants to thwart this non-existent problem then the refs should be penalized, not the players.

The NBA should review flops and if the referees fall for it then they are the ones who get in trouble.

No technical foul free throws. No game stoppage. No potential reviews.

If the refs stop rewarding players for flopping then, well, they’d stop flopping. But it starts with the referees. The refs are the ones who have allowed flopping to grow in this sport.

Marcus Smart throwing his body into the front row when a player makes eye contact and getting a whistle call should result in that ref who blew the whistle getting fined or penalized in some form or fashion. Even if we fans don’t know what the penalty is. The onus should be on the refs to get rid of flopping.

I will be relentlessly telling everyone “I told so” after opening night is ruined by technical free throws because a ref randomly determined a player was flopping but the player was actually injured and there’s a huge problem with refs giving techs to guys who aren’t really flopping and this is the most annoying topic on ESPN First Take for two weeks and the NBA is ruined.

Shrug.gif.

Thanks for reading. Go ahead and sign up for the D, the daily Deadseriousness newsletter and don’t miss out on exclusive new content.