The NBA announced Friday that Memphis Grizzlies guard Scotty Pippen Jr. has been fined $2,000 for flopping during the fourth quarter of his team’s 115-110 win against the Sacramento Kings Thursday night.
On the play which led to the fine, Pippen was defending Kings’ forward DeMar DeRozan as he was trying to drive towards the rim, and as DeRozan dipped his shoulder into Pippen, the Grizzlies guard was thrown off balance and stumbled several steps.
When the play initially happened the Grizzlies bench, including coach Taylor Jenkins, as well as fans behind the bench stand up in surprise for the lack of a foul call. But the play continued on without stoppage.
The league has made it a point to crack down on flopping across the league, especially after approving an in-game penalty ahead of the 2023-24 season that would discourage players from doing it. Players can now be called for flopping during a game by officials.
“Under the new rule, when a game official calls a flop — or a physical act that reasonably appears to be intended to cause the officials to call a foul on another player — the offending player will be charged with a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul and the opposing team will be awarded one free throw attempt, which could be attempted by any player who is in the game when the technical foul is assessed. A player will not be ejected from a game based on flopping violations.”
Officials aren’t required to stop live play to call a flopping penalty, to avoid penalizing a team that’s in position to immediately score. Instead, after the immediate play, the official can assess a flopping penalty which will award the opposing team with a technical free throw and give the player at fault a technical for the game. A coach can’t use a challenge directly for a flop, but if a foul also occurred on the same play where there is a flop, a coach could challenge that and officials could deem a flop occurred upon review.
The league is still able to hand down flop penalties after the game, which is how Pippen Jr. was assessed a fine, and the monetary value lines with what players receive for technical fouls. For a player’s first penalty — like Pippen Jr. — they will be assessed a $2,000 fine. For each additional fine the monetary value will increase incrementally.
