Bill Simmons talks about flopping in the NBA

He did slide tackles on a concrete court?

 

This sort of of commentary really gets me, and we get our fair share on British telly. "playing for the foul" or "he was just too clever for him there" may the accepted phrase's, "F*cking cheat" and "Send the b*stard off if he don't wanna play" is what I'm thinking.

I can understand the sensitivity of use of language, as in to call a player a cheat during a game could be considered libelous or such like. Instead broadcasters appear to condone it it with a wry smile and a nod to a teams 'gamesmanship'.
It seems like political correctness will stop them calling a cheat a cheat. They even seem to take advice, was it not FIFA or suchlike that coined the phrase simulation. The attempt to win a game by cheating is what gets me, the rolling round crying is just to be expected from those kind of players. Any American who is put off by any of this behaviour is completely understandable.
It will be a hell of a job to reverse this trend in unsportsmanlike behavior, more now its all about the money and the business. The use of video evidence in retrospect would be a great start. I loved the 10 match ban if your cheating greatly affected the result of a game. I'd vote for you on that policy.
Until any of this is addressed, as stated though Sep says if the ref didn't spot it don't count, it is unfortunately accepted in this country. *ah, rant over*

 

Torquay United have warned their players they face the sack if they repeatedly try to con the referee.

Chairman Chris Roberts introduced the initiative after he was left "disgusted" by players diving and feigning injury during the World Cup.
He told BBC Sport: "It's only getting worse and I sincerely believe clubs have to stand up and take reponsibility for the conduct of their players.
"I want to win football matches but I want to win matches without cheating."
The new initiative works on the 'three strikes' system. Players found guilty of clearly trying to gain an advantage by diving or feigning injury will be warned on the first two occasions, then placed on the transfer list or dismissed if they transgress a third time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/t/torquay_united/6170066.stm

I think people inside the sport also need to worm out the perpetrators. If I were a manager and a player looked to weak to take a proper challenge, haul him out the game

I remembered this article, In the end it seems it was a bit of a publicity stunt.

 

Well, I think the fans can be instrumental in getting things changed. In the era of blogs and online publications and indy media, it is possible for the non mainstream soccer media to launch a campaign to "Get the Cheating out of Soccer". Restore the sport's HONOR.

This can be done by coordinating letters and emails to soccer publications, jounalists and announcing teams in various countries the world over. Big Soccer could be the catalyst for this. Perhaps the board mods and administration can give some feedback on this. It's an awful problem!

It's futile to leave things in the hands of the currupt honchos at FIFA. They won't do a thing untill they feel enough pressure. But getting mainstream soccer media and announcing teams to begin calling cheating what it is and to ask these questions on the air and in print could begin to turn things around. The use of postmatch video replays to penalise cheaters is a no brainer although Blatter refuses to acknowledge this.

The other issue that needs addressing (together with diving) is the faking of injuries. We know of the post World Cup report that indicated that the majority of "injuries" during the tournament turned out to have been faked. This was exposed by examining doctors' reports after they examined players following matches. Well, why not have a league or federation have its own doctors examine players who claim to have endured injuries - after matches. If a player goes down and causes a match to be stopped so that he receives attention from his team's medical team, that player should immediately be elligible for a post match examination by a designated medical person for verification. Injuries which cause delays in matches would usualy leave bruises or result in swelling which can be detected. So the injury can be confirmed or otherwise. It would be similar to drug testing. You don't have to examine all elligible players, but you can have random examinations occuring often enough to be a deterrent if you bring the hammer down hard enough on these guys. A four match ban and a fine, for example as well as fining the club.

 

The problem with that is the degree of immediate pain or incapacity may not be reflective of the seriousness of the injury. A cramp can be painful but goes away quickly. Then you have situations that seem quite minor but later turn out to be very serious, like when Chris Simms had to have emergency surgery to remove his spleen last year after getting hit in the ribs.

I maintain the best way to deal with the injury-faking problem is to instruct referees not to base their decisions on the perceived severness of the injury that results from a foul. The decision on whether to award a mere free kick or bring out a yellow card should be based on objective criteria other than whether the victim is rolling around on the ground.

 

Yes, I agree with this and I've often thought that the problem has to do with the way infringements are called in soccer. In the NFL, for example, each possible infringement (well, most of them) has a specific name and a specific penalty. Players, umpires, officials, announcers and the public all know what these are. Additionally, there's an added responsibility on the umpire in that he has to give a specific signal indicating the specific infringement committed. He can't just call "foul" or a "push". The breakdown is more specific than that. Since the infringements and the penalties are all encoded, the onus is put on players to avoid commiting the infringements rather than on officials to make overly subjective calls.

This may cause some negative responses, but I think that at its heart, it has to do with the fact that Americans are brought up to believe in the value of a system under the Rule of Law. It's the Law that is held up, not some official. A good number of countries in the rest of the world (note, I'm not saying this is true of all other countries) are more used to being subservient to the authority of designated officials. This includes royalty and the like. People who are simply assumed to be generally correct. This is why FIFA has been able to make its referees relatively impervous to accountability. Americans assume that authority figures must be accountable and bound by specific laws.

The counterargument is that refs must be allowed leeway to use some common sense. You hear this all the time. This is true, but it does not preclude having more objective and specific criteria, as noted above.

I still believe a postmatch medical examination could cut down on a number of faked injuries even if not all types of injuries can be verified by this method.

It's really fascinating to see how many of the sport's problems could be put to rest if FIFA were not such a questionable critter.

 

For an informative counterpoint to Simmons article, see the following (from May, 2006). Flopping, diving, etc. is shown to have a red-white-and-blue origin.

http://www.hoopshype.com/columns/flop_hans.htm

 

umm yes it is. how many times have you seen a guy flopping when he knows he cant make a catch and trying to pretend like he got fouled for pass interference.

it happens 100 times a game. and it usually gets called. it always happens on the hail mary plays. so yes its a big deal when the ref gives them the ball 80 yards down the field.

agreed. the fact is if there's anything that's going to make you win you'll do it. This idea that players back in the day were above that and complete class and were hard but always played by the rules is a joke. It was the 1900s not another species on a different planet.

 

No it dosent. Ive watched plenty of football games where a player will go down on slight contact hoping for pass interference and the ref calls nothing. For the most part the refs are good at getting pass interference right.

 

Exactly. And in any case, to compare the impact of drawing pass interference call with drawing a penalty in soccer, a sport that averages about 2.5 scores per game, is crazy.

Does diving exist in all sports where it has some use? Yes. Is it more prevelant in soccer? Yes.

 

Diving is rampant in serie A and, therefore, i can't stand serie A. Case in point, Inzagha faked injury in the waning moment of the UEFA final just to run out the time. As soon as he was carried out of the pitch, he became fine and dandy. I really wish FIFA/UEFA/others would start banning or fining player for that. Diving is not a part of the game and should be kept that way.

 

Not really when you consider American football will have more scoring opportunities, and therefore more opportunities to cheat.

 

Sorry but that's the biggest load of shit I've ever read.

 

Not really since there is more scoring opportunities theyll cancel out a TD by questionable means where as in soccer a converted PK via a dive can count for 100% or 50% of goals score int hat game.

 

I don't even know how to respond. The notion that diving impacts American football more than it does soccer is simply absurd.

 

To me the fact that its easier to score in football would make it less likley to have cheating and diving involved in it.

 

I read Simmon's little article and I gotta say that ONE word really stood out to me in this article and that word was "CRAP". If SOCCER was "CRAP" then why are we all here!? And why do we like Soccer to begin with?

 

i agree with simmons.... more europeans in the NBA = more flopping

 

The biggest floppers in the league today are an Argentine (Nocioni) and a Brazilian (Varejao). No surprise, eh? But they're no worse than Laimbeer ever was.

 

BS. Do strike zones change size depending on the umpire? Yes. Does the NBA freely allow carrying and traveling? Yes. Do both of these fly in the face of your theory? Yes. There's plenty of interpretation in American refereeing.

 

Anyone watch Ginobli against the Jazz on Monday night?

It was the worst case of infuriating flopping I have ever seen. He drew a bogus charge, then a bogus Technical on the reaction by flopping twice.

 

Of course. Soccer embodies the concept "no harm/no foul", so that if the player does NOT go down, there is no foul (i.e., "advantage").

Football's version of this is declining the penalty after the play, but you get the chance to consider that soberly after the play. If holding was only called if the defensive player fell to the ground, you'd have it everywhere.

Simple rules we could consider:
1. Player must stay off the field of play for 5 minutes or substituted if carried off.
2. Carding for embellishment (remember there's only a card for a flop, not for embellishing, so that if there's a real foul now there's no opportunity for the player acting as if he'd been shot).
3. Stop carding for how bad a foul looks. Just because an attacking player goes ass over elbow, doesn't mean it was a cardable offense.

Problem with video replay is that it only works in big games in technologically savvy nations. FIFA needs to worry about lower level league games in Bolivia, as well as the Champions League. The solutions need to be applied equally in junior high and sandlot league games. That's why Blatter has to stand by the referees.

 

Bill Laimbeer was making a career out of flopping long before Europeans began coming over to the NBA.

 

Bill Simmons can't get his facts straight. Flopping in Soccer is something that has gain wide spread reputation fairly recently. And as soon as it became wide-spread, FIFA took action against it (referee are asked to punish players for diving. How is flopping accepted in Soccer (as he put it) if they have rules against it?

Those fake defensive fouls become wide spread in any contact sport whenever there's too much focus put by the governing body on protecting offense at the expense of defense. That's what happened to soccer after the 90 and 94 World Cup they went out of their way to give offense all the advantage they can. The result is more and more flopping getting rewarded. Now they realize that and have been trying to stop it by setting rules against that.

Same thing in Basketball, the NBA has been going out of their way to boost offense in the league, the result is we see more and more non-defensive fouls being called. Now they will need to address that if they don't want it to get out of hand.

Btw, if Bill Simmons really think european players are to blame for the "influx" of flopping in the NBA, I would think he would have attempted to watch European basketball (Euroleague) to see if there's a culture of floping there.