The Flop

While NPR’s This American Life may be America’s most listened to radio broadcast I’m going to assume there isn’t much of a correlation between its audience and ours and reiterate a discussion aired on this week’s episode: the rise of flopping for offensive fouls in the NBA.

As it turns out, This American Life’s coverage of flopping was itself a reiteration of an article written by ESPN’s Bill Simmons. In his article, Simmons’ argues that the reason why modern defensive players flop to the ground like gunshot victims is because of the influx of European players in the NBA and their cultish upbringing around the whiny game of soccer.

Anyone who’s managed to sit through a few games of ‘football’ knows exactly what Simmons is getting at. In Europe, soccer players flail their limbs and wail like rape victims in tactical reaction to any physical contact. But the dishonesty goes far beyond antics or entertainment; what is essentially lying has become an ingrained strategic component of the sport itself, and it actually wins games. While it might seem despicable and disparaging to us, the rules and culture of Europe’s soccer leagues have long been rewarding fraud in a race to the bottom of sports ethics.

Unfortunately, as Europeans have come to increasingly populate the NBA, their weak-kneed charlatan approach to soccer rules have spread across the league like a bad fashion trend. Interestingly, the athletics department at This American Life claims the player most responsible for the spread of The Flop is 7’1 Serbian Vlade Divac. Old Vlade first came to the NBA in 1989 as part of the first wave of European players in the league.

While successfully flopping, whining and passing his way to a moderate career, Vlade only truly perfected the flop in the early 2000s after his Sacramento Kings began challenging the Shaquille O’Neal -led Los Angeles Lakers year after year. With Shaq in his prime and pretty much impossible to stop, and Vlade in the twilight of a career plagued by bad knees, the only deployable tactic was to draw fouls on Shaq by theatrical flopping to the floor on every other defensive possession. And the Kings ended up playing the Lakers so frequently over their three championships that Vlade became a veritable Robert De Niro at hitting the floor. Other players soon followed suit, adopting The Flop against all the leagues' big men. Because like any unethical behaviour in a competitive environment, the more people do it, the more it becomes necessary for other to do it as well.

When Dell Harris, Vlade Divac’s coach throughout the 90’s was asked whether he taught Vlade the flop Haris responded "Are you kidding? He brought that over here and taught the whole NBA how to flop". Thanks Vlade, thanks Europe.