Do NBA Players get fined for flopping? In basketball, a flop is an intentional fall or stagger by a player after little or no physical contact by an opposing player in order to draw a personal foul call by an official against the opponent.

The move is sometimes called acting, as in “acting as if he was fouled”. Because it is inherently designed to deceive the official, flopping is generally considered to be unsportsmanlike.

Nonetheless, it is widely practiced and even perfected by many professional players. The player that commits the act is referred to as a flopper.

Flopping effectively is not easy to do, primarily because drawing contact can sometimes result in the opposite effect—a foul called on the defensive player—when too much contact is drawn or if the player has not positioned himself perfectly.

Additionally, even if no foul is called on either player, by falling to the floor, the flopping defensive player will have taken himself out of position to provide any further defensive opposition on the play, thus potentially allowing the offense to score easily. To consistently draw offensive fouls on opponents takes good body control and a great deal of practice.

The NBA added a rule in 1997 to cut down on flopping near the basket, adding a 4-foot (1.22 meter) “dotted line area” around the center of the basket to help prevent flops. Such flops are charged as blocking fouls or no-calls. In the 2012–13 season, the league began fining guilty players.

In the NBA, the penalty for “flopping” is a technical foul if caught in-game, and a fine if caught after the game in video reviews. The technical foul is a non-unsportsmanlike conduct technical foul (one of six fouls a player may be assessed before disqualification; no ejection is possible).

In FIBA play, the penalty is a technical foul that counts as one of two towards ejection.

National Federation of State High School Associations basketball rule 10.6.f of 2012–13 specifically defines “faking being fouled”, in the judgment of an official, as unsportsmanlike conduct subject to a penalty of a technical foul, but in practice, this call is exceptionally rare.

Explanation of Anti-Flopping Rule

In an effort to curb the unsportsmanlike practice known as “flopping,” the NBA implemented an anti-flopping rule starting in the 2012-13 season.

By the NBA a “flop” is defined as an attempt to either fool referees into calling undeserved fouls or fool fans into thinking the referees missed a foul call by exaggerating the effect of contact with an opposing player.

The main factor in determining whether a player committed a flop is whether his physical reaction to contact with another player is inconsistent with what would have been expected given the force or direction of the contact. For example, a player will be considered to have committed a “flop” if he falls to the floor following minimal contact or lunges in a direction different from the direction of the contact.

The determination of whether a player has violated the flopping rule will be made by the League following a video review of the play. (Game officials will not make determinations about flopping during games.)

The first time a player is determined to have committed a flop, he will be warned by the NBA. Thereafter, the following automatic penalties will apply:

Violation 2: $5,000 fine

Violation 3: $10,000 fine

Violation 4: $15,000 fine

Violation 5: $30,000 fine

For a sixth (or any subsequent) violation of the rule, the player will be subject to such discipline as the League determines is reasonable under the circumstances, including an increased fine and/or suspension.

The video of the play can be reviewed after the game by the league office, they will assess if a fine is warranted to the player. These fines can get increasingly larger if the behavior persists, an attempt to get players to stop doing it.

With this rule in place, flopping has cut back quite a bit, players don’t want to get caught in a tight game and cost their team the win. However, it certainly hasn’t stopped players from doing it entirely. In fact, in recent years we have seen this movie from the traditional basketball defensive flop, trying to draw an offensive foul, to players in possession of the ball trying to get foul calls on even the most innocuous of contact.

What do NBA players think of the flopping rules?

Back when the rule was first introduced, it was a hot subject and many players were asked to comment. Kobe Bryant was the first and most notable to speak his mind on the subject. He said that he was happy for the rule change, specifically mentioning one player and how it ended up affecting a playoff series due to the fouls that Shaquille O’Neal picked up in some of those games.

Ironically, James Harden agreed with the statement as well. Most people nowadays believe that Harden flops more than anybody else in the league, though there isn’t currently an official statistic to back up that type of statement. Fun thing is that Harden does his flopping on the offensive end.

Blake Griffin was another player that many thoughts flopped all the time back when this rule was introduced. He, on the other hand, wasn’t too big a fan of it. While he said it was nice that the league wanted to keep the game clean, he said that the punishment really wouldn’t matter to players due to it being small.

Who was the first NBA player to get fined for flopping?

When this rule was first introduced, nobody in the NBA wanted to be the first to get punished for flopping. In the first season of its implementation, Brooklyn Nets forward Reggie Evans became the first player to get fined for flopping.

He wasn’t caught during the course of the game, but the league had caught him flopping while watching the game tape back. He was fined $5,000 for the act and had only been punished due to being warned earlier in the season for another flopping offense.

Once other players realized that this new rule was legitimately being enforced by the league, the rate of flopping dramatically dropped. Only 24 violations were handed out that season for flopping, with only five players picking up a second $5,000 fine for the act. Evans will forever be remembered as the first guy to get docked for flopping in NBA history, a stat that he likely won’t want on his resume.

What NBA players have been fined for flopping recently?

The flopping violations are not very common anymore. Back in the first few years of its placement, the league was paying strict attention to it. Nowadays they really don’t put it first in terms of punishments and fines.

Players have been fined more frequently for acts that don’t directly affect play, like taunting. However, a few players were recently warned for violating the anti-flopping rule in 2021.

Patrick Beverley was hit with a $5,000 fine for doing so. That isn’t too surprising considering he has long been accused of flopping and antagonizing throughout his entire career. In the same year, LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma were handed warnings by the league for violating the rule themselves. In James’ case, he was seen getting boxed out during a game. The player didn’t even make contact with his arms and yet LeBron flew backward and onto the ground, causing the referees to incorrectly give his team possession again.

Shortly after that, Kuzma was defending somebody in the fourth quarter. He got a small touch on the chest and decided to spin around and fall onto the ground even though there was ridiculously little contact on the play. These are just some examples of flopping in recent memory, though unfortunately there has probably been a lot more of it that the league hasn’t caught notice of. It is yet to be known if the NBA will ever decide to really crack down on these violations, or if they will just have it sit on the backend until they really start checking it consistently.

History of flopping

Frank Ramsey, who played on seven championship teams for the Boston Celtics from 1954 to 1965, wrote a cover story in Sports Illustrated in 1963 with writer Frank Deford, where he detailed his flopping technique.

Afterward, Ramsey was reprimanded in a letter by NBA president Walter Kennedy. In the 1970s, Ramsey’s coach, Red Auerbach, criticized flopping in one of his “Red on Roundball” segments at halftime during NBA game telecasts.

NBA player Rasheed Wallace has been critical of flopping in the league. In a 2008 interview, when he was with the Detroit Pistons, he complained that:

“All that bull[expletive]-ass calls they had out there. With Mike Callahan and Kenny Mauer, you’ve all seen that [expletive],” Wallace said. “You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they’re calling that [expletive]. That [expletive] ain’t basketball out there. It’s all [expletive] entertainment. You all should know that [expletive]. It’s all [expletive] entertainment.”

In November of 2009, Wallace, by this time with the Boston Celtics, again made sports news wires when he claimed that Hedo Türkoğlu, then with the Toronto Raptors, duped the officials into giving Wallace his fifth technical of the season by flopping:

“They’ve got to know that he’s a damn flopper. That’s all Turkododo does. Flopping should get you nowhere. He acts as I shot him. That’s not basketball, man. That’s not defense. That’s garbage, what it is. I’m glad I don’t have too much of it left.”

Commissioner David Stern has complained about flopping because it is a way to fool the officials, but the league has been unable to find a way to punish it or prevent it. And, although Stern agreed with Wallace in principle, the league fined Wallace $25,000 for the 2008 outburst and $30,000 for the second.

Shaquille O’Neal loathes opponents who resort to flopping. He criticized Dikembe Mutombo, the 2000–2001 Defensive Player of the Year, in the 2001 NBA Finals and Vlade Divac in the 2002 Western Conference finals for their theatrics.

O’Neal said he would never exaggerate contact to draw a foul. “I’m a guy with no talent who has gotten this way with hard work.”

In a 2006 interview in Time, O’Neal said if he were NBA commissioner, he would “Make a guy have to beat a guy not flop and get calls and be nice to the referees and kiss ass.”

However, in a matchup against the Orlando Magic on March 3, 2009, O’Neal flopped against center Dwight Howard. Magic coach Stan Van Gundy was “very disappointed cause O’Neal knows what it’s like. Let’s stand up and play like men, and I think our guy did that tonight.”

O’Neal responded, “Flopping is playing like that your whole career. I was trying to take the charge, trying to get a call. It probably was a flop, but flopping is the wrong use of words. Flopping would describe his coaching.”

Shortly before the Indiana Pacers were to take on the Miami Heat in the 2012 Eastern Conference semifinals, Pacers head coach Frank Vogel criticized his opponents for alleged flopping:

“They are the biggest flopping team in the NBA. It’ll be very interesting [to see] how the referees officiate the series and how much flopping they reward… Every drive to the basket, they have guys not making a play on the ball but sliding in front of drivers. Oftentimes they’re falling down even before contact is even being made. It’ll be interesting to see how the series is officiated.”

Vogel was fined $15,000 by the league for these remarks.

In the 2013 Eastern Conference semifinals between the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat, Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau accused LeBron James of flopping. James vehemently denied the accusation, saying “I don’t need to flop. I play an aggressive game but I don’t flop. I’ve never been one of those guys. I don’t need to flop. I don’t even know how to do it. So it doesn’t mean much to me.”

Thibodeau was fined $35,000 by the league for his comments. Nonetheless, James was seen winking after a flop in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2011. On May 29, 2013, before Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Indiana Pacers, James again denied that he is a flopper, but said that he recognizes flopping as an effective strategy. “Some guys have been flopping for years, just trying to get an advantage. Any way you can get an advantage over the opponent to help your team win, so be it,” James said.

As of June 14, 2013, eight players had been fined for flopping during the playoffs: Pacers’ Jeff Pendergraph, Thunder’s Derek Fisher, Knicks’ J. R. Smith, Grizzlies’ Tony Allen, Heat’s LeBron James and Chris Bosh, Pacers’ David West and Lance Stephenson.

On June 7, 2013, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced that he is funding a study on flopping. One of Cuban’s companies, Radical Hoops Ltd., has provided $100,000 to have biomechanics experts from Southern Methodist University launch an 18-month study into the forces involved in collisions during basketball plays.

The goal is to investigate the possibility of using video or motion capture techniques to distinguish between legitimate collision and flop.