The NBA Board of Governors approved a new in-game anti-flopping rule as well as an expanded use of the coach’s challenge. Both rules were tested out during the 2023 Las Vegas Summer League and will now go into effect for the 2023-24 NBA season.
The NBA defines a flop as “a physical act that reasonably appears to be intended to cause the officials to call a foul on another player.” Under this new rule, a player who gets called for flopping will be assessed a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul and the other team will receive one free throw. This won’t be like a standard technical foul as players can not be ejected due to flopping.
The official does not have to stop play immediately in order to assess a flop, and are allowed to wait until the next neutral opportunity to stop play so as to not interrupt a team who has an immediate scoring opportunity.
Flops can not be directly reviewed via coach’s challenge, but can be assessed if seen during a review of a foul call or any other referee-initiated review. The league will also be able to assess flops after a game in which the penalty will be the same as a technical foul, a $2,000 fine which can increase due to multiple offenses. In-game assessed flops will not result in a fine, only the free throw for the opposing team.
This in-game flopping rule is on a one-year trial basis.
The expanded coach’s challenge awards a team a second challenge should their first challenge be successful. A team must still use a timeout to trigger a challenge, but will retain the timeout used for the first challenge if it is successful. However, a team will not retain the timeout used to trigger a second challenge regardless of whether it is successful or not due to game flow and game length reasons.
Under the previous rules, coaches would save their challenge until the very end of a game in case they needed it for a close call down the stretch. But this oftentimes meant obvious wrong calls earlier in games would stand because no one wanted to burn their challenge in the first half.
By adding this second one if the first is successful, coaches will feel a bit more comfortable in potentially challenging a call that should have gone in their favor earlier while knowing they will still have one more in their pocket in crunch time.
Darvin Ham confident in Lakers’ championship hopes
With the new rules in place, there will be an adjustment period for the coaches and players are the league. The Los Angeles Lakers should be one of the better teams in the NBA this season after a successful offseason, which gives Darvin Ham confidence in their championship hopes.
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