Earlier this week, the NBA officially announced that they will be implementing a new anti-flopping rule for the NBA Summer League. We have now seen how the rule looks on the court, and fans had plenty of reactions to how the rule was enforced on Wednesday night.
The new rule makes it so the player committing a flopping penalty will be assessed a technical foul that does not count toward an ejection. This will result in a technical free throw for the opposing team.
We saw this get called in Wednesday’s Summer League game between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Grizzlies forward Jake Laravia drove the ball to the basket, making contact with Thunder guard Jalen Shackelford in the process. Shackelford threw his head back to emphasize the contact and was called for a technical by officials after the play was finished.
https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1676744383885082624
Fans have largely been against players flopping, so many fans were in favor of how the rule was carried out.
Others thought that the call was a bad one in this instance considering Shackelford actually did take contact to his head even if he did sell it a little bit.
Shackelford took to social media to offer his opinion on the call, clearly not loving it based on the emoji’s he put on a replay of the play.
This is still just a trial period for the new rule, as the NBA Board of Governors will still need to vote on the changes later this month to put the changes into action for the 2023-24 season.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.