Adam Silver delivers alarming take on flopping
As you might have heard, two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, star of the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder might-how should I put this-sliiightly exaggerate on-court contact every now and then.
He flops. He's a perpetual, unrepentant flopper who fakes contact to draw foul calls in order to gain a competitive advantage. The furor about tactic (and SGA's culpability for its popularity) has escalated to the point that SGA himself is suing Underdog Sports over their new board game "Unethical Hoops" which heavily features SGA's (un?)likeness, according to The Athletics latest exposé.
Truly, what a time to be alive. Then, NBA commissioner Adam Silver appeared on ESPN's "The Pat McAfee Show" (because of course he did, because we live in topsy-turvy world) on whether the NBA has a flopping problem.
In brief, here are Silver's biggest soundbites in context.
Adam Silver denies that flopping is an issue
To his credit, Pat McAfee (eponymous host of "The Pat McAfee Show", a real-life popular ESPN product), didn't skip the tough questions and pressed Adam Silver about the biggest, hot-button topic from this years NBA playoffs.
"How about the flopping? Flopping, floooppiiiing? Flopping. Big conversation," McAfee asked.
Adam Silver squirmed comically/in an alien overlord-like manner that you have to watch, before splitting hairs and otherwise employing classic executive speak logical fallacies / PR jiu-jitsu to diminish and defuse the obvious issue.
"So, um, yeah, and it's been a conversation. I would only say that there's a difference between selling a call, exaggeration, and a true flop which is where you're fooling the referee."
So, right off the bat you have the splitting of hairs between the three kinds of flop there, which I would argue ALL should not be part of the game. Like, since when are we cool with exaggeration / selling a call? That goes against the competitive spirit of the sport and should be frowned upon and criticized if not outright made illegal.
However, the far more insidious claim is saying that a true flop is only a true flop if it fools the referee.
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A flop is a flop if it gets the call or not. The act of trying to sell a foul that is not there is a flop REGARDLESS of whether the referee makes the call or not. The players are doing it because they are getting the calls. If they didn't get the calls, they wouldn't do it as there would be no advantage.
So, it follows that the referees are the heart of the issue, and if they corrected their in-game approach-or if anti-flopping reviews after games were implemented-the players would follow suit and correct their behavior.
Unfortunately, Adam Silver understands this, too. And his job is to take the heat off of the league.
Adam Silver defends NBA referees, says they have been 'incredible'
Finally, we arrive at the quote that will be being uttered incredulously at debates in bars tonight.
"Even as I sit in the stands at games, players may be falling down, players may be reacting to a call. But to me, if they're not fooling the referees, it's OK. Players are taught to sell calls these days," Silver said on the Pat McAfee show. "I mean, can officiating get better? Of course, we're always working on that. Can officials get fooled occasionally? We're always looking that as well."
Ok, we get that, as I noted he understands that the issue flows downstream from refereeing to player approach. Then came the coup-de-grace:
But our officiating is incredible."
It's objectively wild that he thinks we'll believe those two realities can coexist, at least in any harmony.
Silver says players are employing 3+ variants of flopping, he admits players are trying to fool referees (and that referees are being fooled), he sees that flopping is an issue, but ALSO contends that their refereeing is incredible? I'm sure Silver would argue that it is on the whole-if you forgot about flopping-but that's disingenuous.
NBA refereeing is not incredible when it comes to flopping.
Flopping is the biggest story from this edition of the NBA playoff (besides the Knicks), because of both the actual refereeing and the precedent that it has set causing them to flop for a competitive advantage (that applies to the Spurs as well as the Thunder).
Something needs to change. To that notion, Adam Silver equivocated, deflecting towards further implementation of video refereeing.
"Those calls will be done by an AI automated system with cameras lined around the court and it'll take all those so-called objective calls out of the hands of the referees," Silver stated. "It'll be instantaneous, it'll be automatic. Just, 'Play on. Let's go, Spurs inbound.' And you'll move on, you won't have to deal with challenges on those calls.
I don't believe him. I think he's promising unrealistically fantastic technology to avoid the harder conversation about how the NBA should legislate the tactic that has been a crucial part of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder dominance (and that has, fairly or unfairly, defined the multiple time MVP's playstyle).
Instantaneous review or flagging of flopping is a fantasy. The game moves too fast, a certain amount of contact is legal, and the context of every play within the flow of the game matters for ruling on each flop.
Referees have to call flops live. Or, even better and more necessary-and this is the real solution-there have to be extensive and careful review of all potential flops after the game by slow motion video replay. And floppers have to be punished substantially.
But Adam Silver and the NBA don't want to have that conversation, certainly not this year as the playoff are ongoing.
They've let it go on too long to turn back or change course right now, or maybe anytime soon. So, the product on TV will suffer and-lord help us-if the Thunder do make the finals SGA will be mocked relentlessly if and when he flops at MSG. Poing being, this is only going to escalate from here.
At the time of this last sentence, Underdog is refusing to back down from SGA's cease and desist. Get that popcorn ready.
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This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 2:54 PM.