After discussing possible plans for rules against flopping during the past offseason, the NBA officially adopted new rules on Wednesday, announcing that players will get fined for repeat violations.
The anti-flopping rules were created to help combat players tricking referees into calling fouls when little or no contact was made.
In the official release, the NBA said the league "will adopt an anti-flopping rule beginning with the 2012-13 season."
"Flops have no place in our game," Stu Jackson, the NBA's executive vice president of basketball operations, said in a written statement. "They either fool referees into calling undeserved fouls or fool fans into thinking the referees missed a foul call."
"Accordingly, both the Board of Governors and the Competition Committee felt strongly that any player who the league determines, following video review, to have committed a flop should -- after a warning -- be given an automatic penalty."
In the statement, the NBA defined flopping as: "any physical act that appears to have been intended to cause the referees to call a foul on another player."
The penalties will start with a warning for the first-time violation, but will escalate to monetary fines for each subsequent flop. The scale goes up $5,000 each time a player flops over the season and increase to $30,000 for a fifth offense.
The release also stated that, "if a player violates the anti-flopping rule six times or more, he will be subject to discipline that is reasonable under the circumstances, including an increased fine and/or suspension."
Players who appear to commit flops, but are actually performing a basketball move, will most likely be able to avoid penalty due to the NBA's procedures in reviewing the actions.
As written in the statement, "Physical acts that constitute legitimate basketball plays (such as moving to a spot in order to draw an offensive foul) and minor physical reactions to contact will not be treated as flops."
The league has been hampered by flopping for years, including throughout last season's playoffs and NBA finals. Some of the players who are notorious for flopping includes San Antonio Spurs star Manu Ginobili, Oklahoma City guard James Harden, point guard Baron Davis, point guard Chris Paul and Lakers center Pau Gasol.
"If you continue to do this, you may you have to suffer some consequences," Stern said about flopping during the NBA Finals. "What those exactly should be and what the progression is, is to be decided, because ... we just want to put a stake in the ground that says this is not something that we want to be part of our game, without coming down with a sledgehammer but just doing it in a minimalist way to begin stamping it out. And I think there are ways we can do that and we'll have to wait and see exactly what we come up with."
The NBA also said that they will announce later on the penalties for flopping in the playoffs, which will be separate from the regular season guidelines.
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