This Example Of The NBA's New Flopping Rule Completely Misses The Point Of Why They Need A Rule In The First Place

When we learned that the NBA was finally going to try and do something about NBA players flopping, I felt like most people were on board. The topic of flopping is tricky because

A) Everyone flops, yes even players on your favorite team

B) Players will always do it as long as they keep being rewarded

C) There's little consistency when it comes to what gets called and what doesn't

When the MVP of your league is doing shit like this on a nightly basis

it's not really a surprise that Adam Silver and the league said enough was enough. The thing is, after watching Joe Dumars explain the changes for this year, I'm not so sure this is the change people were looking for, at least from an offensive player standpoint.

But that play on Jokic should be a no-call, not a flop. The landing space flagrant is another call that refs seem to give regardless of whether there was even actual contact. If you challenge a 3PA and a shooter falls down, they basically get the call 99.9% of the time. The fix to me isn't giving them a flopping tech for it, just make that a no call. Tell your officials to stop taking the bait. In that clip I don't consider Jokic "flopping", I consider it more of a "baiting" type deal. There was probably marginal contact so Jokic tried to sell it. I don't consider that the "flopping problem" we see in the league. What Embiid did in those videos, was a clear flop. If you have someone faking like they got hit in the face, that's a flop. If you have someone doing this

that's what the league needs to crack down on. That Jokic play feels like something the league is going to focus on for the first two weeks of the season and then forget all about it. You know, just like they did with every other rule change. Remember not being able to lean into a defender when taking a 3PA? Officials forgot all about that after a month.

The other part of what makes this flopping change so tricky is we also have to see how guys are officiated when it comes to initiating contact whether on drives or establishing a screen. Are the refs going to hone in on that stuff as well? Because that's part of the flopping equation as well. 

To me, this seems like the NBA's heart is in the right place but we're going to see how the execution looks once the games start. For plays like Jokic, I think the game is better served with that just being a no call. Don't stop the game, no FTs awarded, just keep the game moving. Sooner or later shooters will stop doing that shit if they know they will no longer be rewarded for it. The 300lb centers falling 30ft from the basket after the slightest of contact? Yeah, you can legislate that right out of the game for all I care.