I think kind of the point of the fines is to stop the flopping. In essence the flopping is, uh, lying. Whichever way you want to skin it, Barea 'flopped' and tried to influence the officials to give him a call. Great call on that one. On the second bloke, if he didn't flail his arms about like he was dying, then perhaps he would've been forgiven for falling down. Can't wait to see Chris Paul/ Blake Griffin get fined!
Everybody embelishes contact when they are fouled. If you play basketball YOU DO TOO! The question is not whether you embelished but whether the contact you embelished WAS A FOUL.
And let me add that if those 2 incidents can be fined then you should be getting at least 2 or 3 fines per game. Cmon guys... there are way waaaaay worse examples of flopping than these two. These seemed rather mild to me.
A difference between flopping and lying is that there is some level of deliberation with lying. With flopping though, how much deliberation actually goes on in the split second between the contact and the embellishment? This is an ingrained habit for some players, so automatic that is practically a reflex reaction. I doubt they can change their habits overnight. If a star player isn't fined by the All-Star break, I can only conclude the NBA is protecting the 'faces' of the league.
That's good to see, I'd like to see a warning on Blake Griffin in a couple of days for his flop against Golden State. If I see that, then I know it's legit.
If you are a player going up for a layup and you miss because someone hits your arm and the referee lets it go, naturally you are going to embelish the contact more the next time so that the referee calls it. Put simply, you missed because the other player cheated. Trying to make this obvious to the referee makes sense. There just isn't any way to avoid this because its the logical way to react. Stuff that gets fined should be egregious and should be picked out very carefully. A good example of an incident that should be fined is when a player is trying to post up another and the second the defender gets barely touched, the defender just falls on his butt. That is clearly premeditated cheating and not a split second reaction to contact.
In all seriousness, the NBA is worried about going down the road of soccer, which is almost unwatchable (unless the best referees are involved) due to the flopping. These guys are such amazing athletes they can easily sell it. Of course, Stern is the guy who ushered in the "superstar treatment" from the referees, which brought a lot of these theatrics into the game, so he should not get credit for trying to clean up a mess he created.
Why are you defending those two plays. You sound like a flopper. You are overthinking this. These are multimillionaires. Who cares if the league is overzealous fining them if it works; the fines do not have any outcome on the game being played. Plus, these two were warnings anyhow....not fines.
I'm personally not like (a lot of you guys in here honestly) in wanting authoritave figures to hand down wrist slaps on these "spoiled coddled" athletes, who's self absorbed "arrogance" has tarnished a great game...or whatever dramatic effect you want to describe it. I think its just players trying to find a competitive edge. Though this is a small but slightly encouraging start. I do think there's offenses worse than those examples. If thats as much as they can find, it almost means the athletes were already aware COMING INTO the season that they need to cut down on the obvious flops. So there's some POSSIBLE influence just even having the rule in place
Nice! I'm glad they're not too strict or else it would be a serious witchhunt but these two are obvious. The flailing of the arms and whirlwind ensuing in the 2nd video is hilarious and orders you a warning, this is not the theatre or Hollywood. I never expected them to put up the videos which is though transparent, leaves questions about will this affect the flops by 'stars'? No way, they're going to put Lebron / Wade / Chris Paul / Griffin on there every week.
They aren't the most egregious flops, but they are still flops so I don't know why the league shouldn't call them out. I actually like that they aren't too egregious. For the warning shots, it shows the players they're serious this time. A lot of guys need to break the habit of the reflexive flailing. Knowing ticky-tack stuff like this will cost you helps. However, we probably need a thread to track all the obvious flops by star players that the league has somehow 'missed.'
Punishing people for no reason is counterproductive. If you want people to both follow and respect the rules, the rules have to make sense and need to be applied wisely. And yes, you are correct that they were only warnings. I just think they were bad choices to start with. Makes me wonder what they will end up fining if these incidents merited a warning.
If the referees knew a player was flopping, why did the referees still called a foul on the opposing player? Because the referees couldn't tell it was a flop? Now with all those rules in place, now the referees can tell it is a flop despite they always claim the game is moving too fast?? Problems are both ways, players who like to flop to sell a foul and the referees who obviously biased against certain players. Fine should go both ways in order to improve the game.