National Sports

Stopping the flop an NBA priority

Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert gave New York’s Jalen Brunson a shove to the back during a preseason game earlier this week, and the reigning NBA Finals Most Valuable Player fell forward after taking that impact.

That was fine. Predictable, expected, understandable.

Thing is, Brunson continued to stumble -- and that’s what the NBA is watching.

The message from the NBA is simple: Stop the flop. While it’s plausible that a 7-foot-1, 258-pound chiseled man like Gobert certainly could send someone 11 inches shorter and 68 pounds lighter like Brunson flying with a shove, the referee clearly felt in that moment that the Knicks star oversold the impact.

A technical foul for flopping was called. Brunson didn’t like it, but the NBA says those calls will be coming this season when the line between embellishment and flopping -- a subjective line, to say the least -- gets crossed.

“We’re seeing people say, ‘Oh, I’m so tired of the flopping,'” Monty McCutchen, the NBA’s senior vice president of referee development and training, said before preseason play started this fall. “There’s a real institutional distinction between embellishments -- which we have allowed, and are going to continue to allow, which is not secondary, is not theatrical, is not exaggerated -- and flopping.

“Embellishment is saying, ‘Hey, I think something illegal took place here, and I’m trying to draw your attention to it.’ We did not want to rob our players of the passion or the ability to draw attention to something.”

The NBA always has officiating priorities -- some called points of emphasis, others called areas of focus -- going into a season. This season’s lists include clarity on off-arm push-offs by offensive players (or creating space illegally), what is legal freedom of movement on screens, and proper closeouts on jump shots.

Referees have gone into training camps to give teams a taste of what’s happening, and obviously the preseason games provide a more open look at the changes and how they’ll affect play.

“I believe NBA players are some of the best and quickest at adapting to rule the trends,” said James Jones, a former NBA player -- and NBA champion -- who is now an executive vice president overseeing basketball operations for the league. “I have no doubt players will adapt in a positive way and in a competitive way.”