The NBA’s flopping problem needs serious enforcement, and Devin Booker isn’t innocent

Flopping and foul baiting are NBA outlaws on the loose. They are close cousins and twin pestilences ruining basketball the way termites ruin your floorboards. They must be eradicated in the coming offseason.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are the primary problem. Because they are a great team and a primary offender. Because their star player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, does it so frequently and so effortlessly.

At the highest levels of basketball, the aesthetics become grotesque, unmarketable and highly unnecessary for a two-time reigning NBA Most Valuable Player. The same can be said about a good chunk of the Thunder team, a roster full of exquisite complementary talent resorting to dirty tricks because they are good at exploiting loops and holes. Because they can get away with it.

They are also trending in the direction of highly unlikeable. A team now perceived more like the Houston Astros championship team that banged on garbage cans to relay stolen signs. They didn’t need to. But they did it anyway.

At some point, the NBA must reject this kind of garbage. A champion must be crowned between two teams that respect honor, decorum and dignity, not teams and players looking to fool referees and game the system.

The NBA must get serious about flopping enforcement. Flopping technicals should come with fines and escalating penalties, including unpaid suspensions.

No longer can the game reward players who exaggerate the first sign of contact instead of the player courageous enough to absorb contact and finish at the rim. No longer should the sport tolerate shooters shamelessly putting themselves on the floor on the follow-through of a field goal attempt.

And this one starts at home because Devin Booker is also a prime offender.

Someone in the Suns organization needs to make him stop. Booker has built a tremendous, hardcore reputation inside the sport. He should not want to be associated with this deceitful, disrespectful behavior. Even if it works.

Besides, all those self-inflicted tumbles can’t be good for an athlete nearing age 30. They certainly don’t help the transition defense in Phoenix. And they won’t play well in the same locker room with Dillon Brooks, who is the new face of ethical hoops.

After all, Kobe Bryant is one of Booker’s idols, and Bryant once called flopping, “a chump move.” And in the NBA, I think we can all agree:

The champs shouldn’t be chumps.

Reach Bickley at dbickley@arizonasports.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on 98.7 and the Arizona Sports app.

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