Henry Imler May 17th, 2007

From Bill Simmons: Common sense vs. the NBA rulebook

3. The single most disgusting NBA development of the
past few years? The flopping. Slowly, regretfully, inexplicably, the
sport is morphing into soccer — as exemplified by Kirilenko’s swan
dive near the end of Tuesday’s Jazz-Warriors game that fouled out Matt
Barnes, or Kirk Hinrich’s perfectly designed flopparoo to draw Chauncey
Billups’ fourth foul in Detroit Tuesday. I blame the influx of European
players for this trend because flopping has always been an acceptable
part of soccer; they grew up watching that crap and understood that it
could work in basketball as well, especially if you have a group of
largely incompetent referees calling the action. So it started a few
years ago, it’s gotten worse and worse, and now, it’s affecting the
overall competitiveness of these games.

Here’s the problem: Because we don’t have any anti-flopping rules,
it behooves defenders to fall backward every time a low-post player
lowers his shoulder, and it behooves them to slide under airborne
players and plant their feet for a charge (even if they might end up
breaking the guy’s neck in the process). Not to keep bringing up the
pickup basketball analogy, but geez … can you imagine if somebody
pulled this crap during a game among friends? The prevailing reactions
would be, “What the hell are you doing?” and “If you do that again, I’m
gonna sock you.” But because the NBA refuses to do anything about the
flopping, it’s evolved into a savvy defensive maneuver. For instance,
if you’re Barnes and you’re giving up 50 pounds to Boozer on the low
post, there’s only two ways you’re stopping him: Go for a strip if he
puts the ball on the ground, or jump backward if he’s dumb enough to
lower his shoulder as he’s turning around. Those are your two options.

Is that basketball? Hell, no! In fact, when I was a little kid –
and I swear to God, this happened — a guard named Mike Newlin flopped
to draw a charge from the great Dave Cowens, a fiery Hall of Famer who
played with a remarkable level of passion and fury, to the degree that
he burned himself out after 7-8 years. Completely and utterly outraged
that Newlin committed such a phony act of sportsmanship, Cowens berated
the ref who made the call, yelled at him some more, then started
running back on defense when he noticed Newlin dribbling up the court.
Now, our seats were at midcourt, so this happened right in front of us
and nearly caused me to pee my pants — as Cowens was running, he
snapped and suddenly charged Newlin like a free safety, bodychecked him
at full speed (much, MUCH harder than Horry’s foul on Nash) and sent
poor Newlin careening into the press table at about 35 mph. Then he
turned to the same ref and screamed …

“NOW THAT’S A F——- FOUL!”

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