Congratulations J.J. Barea and Donald Sloan, you have gotten the historic first warnings from the NBA for flopping.
The league announced Monday that Minnesota’s Barea and Cleveland’s Sloan got warnings — there are no fines until their second offense (and then it is just $5,000 for the next offense).
The goal rather is to leak these and hopefully create some public humiliation (you know reporters are going to ask about this) that will keep guys from doing it in the future.
These are both pretty legit calls by the NBA.
Sloan has no room to argue. He was trying to pressure Chicago’s Kirk Hinrich as the Bull guard brought the ball up the court, and Sloan did get bumped on a Nazr Mohammed pick, but then he tried to sell the contact by looking like a second shooter in the grassy knoll took him out.
In Barea’s case, he was sliding with the ball handling Jimmer Fredette as he came across the top of the key, Fredette used his left arm to keep some space and while there was a little contact Barea threw his arms in the air and sold it well past the point of what the contact would have warranted. In this case Barea could argue he was throwing his arms up to keep his balance or that it wasn’t really that severe, but it was a pretty clear sell.
It will be interesting to see if this has any real impact as the season wears on, and particularly during the playoffs when more is at stake and players are willing to risk more.