Due to injury C.J. Watson didn’t even play in his first NBA game this season until after Thanksgiving.
But it didn’t take him long to pick up his second flopping penalty from the league. The NBA fined Watson $5,000 for the flop above from Monday night’s game against Utah. Watson is the first NBA player to get a fine this season for flopping, he had been warned previously for another flopping incident.
Big man Rudy Gobert came up behind Watson looking for a rebound and there is some mild contact but Watson sells it — he launches forward setting a broad jump record on this flop. To say he embellished this is to undersell the word embellished.
That said, this fine doesn’t hurt much — the fine covers 0.3 percent of Watson’s salary for the year. The money is not going to keep players from doing this in the future.