Economic Incentives that Work:
How to stop 'flopping'
30 May 2008 in Regulatory Economics, Amusements
The Washington Post's Ivan Carter writes that the NBA has decided to fine players who 'flop'. Will it work?
'Flopping" is the practice of going "too far in exaggerating fouls."
[F]lopping ... has increasingly become a point of contention among coaches and players in recent seasons. Following his team's Game 5 loss to Boston on Wednesday night, Detroit forward Rasheed Wallace criticized the officials because they allowed the Celtics to get away with flopping on several key plays.
"You saw them calls," said Wallace, who was fined $25,000 for his comments. "The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that [expletive]. That ain't basketball out there. It's entertainment."
Among the game's most adept floppers are Cleveland forward Anderson Varejao, San Antonio guard Manu Ginóbili and Chicago forward Andres Nocioni.
"You saw them calls," said Wallace, who was fined $25,000 for his comments. "The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that [expletive]. That ain't basketball out there. It's entertainment."
Among the game's most adept floppers are Cleveland forward Anderson Varejao, San Antonio guard Manu Ginóbili and Chicago forward Andres Nocioni.
The prospect of being fined for complaining about the officials apparently did not deter Wallace from complaining. A logical reason is that this year Wallace's salary is $13,140,000. He played 2,348.5 minutes, earning $5,595 per minute. Wallace need not consciously think this analytically about the financial aspects of the game, but it entirely plausible that he thought it was worth giving up 13.4 seconds of salary to make his point.
Larger fines are surely necessary to provide an effective economic incentive, but they would have to be extraordinarily large to deter on-court behavior that could be the difference from winning and losing. Very large fines could be assessed if the conduct was truly reprehensible and easily observed without error. But flopping is not. Note the way Carter described it in his lead: Flopping occurs not when a player exaggerates a foul, but only when he goes "too far" in doing so. That means flopping is not per se objectionable, and where it becomes so is determined subjectively subject to the discretion of the very officials Wallace is complaining about.
This is an excellent example of an economic incentive designed to fail. The fine would be levied subjectively to conduct that is not per se objectionable -- some NBA players consider it their duty to flop if it provides their team with an advantage, much like baseball players who slide aggressively to take out infielders trying to make double plays. It would be applied arbitrarily, because there is no bright line defining when exaggeration goes "too far." And finally, the value of the sanction is trivial.
It is easy to think of alternative economic incentives that would be much more successful. For example, officials could call technical fouls for incidents of flopping they perceive as truly outrageous. Technical fouls hurt both the player and his team where it matters -- in the score and possibly on the court, if the player ends up ejected. Alternatively, officials could respond to flopping by rescinding the foul call. This does not remove subjectivity or discretion, but officials can enforce the rule starting from the most egregious offenses and slowly work their way down to the level of behavior the league seeks. In short, there are effective though partial solutions available, but each requires officials to do their jobs better.
Carter says LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson agrees that flopping is a problem, but his economics intution is sufficient to make him skeptical that fines would be effective:
"It's tough to just relegate that to something that can be a monetary fine," Jackson said. "I do agree that it has come to a rather weird state in our game, where it's getting to look more and more like European soccer."
European soccer is a fine example of the problem, and interestingly, one that like basketball also has easy economic incentive solutions. Watch any soccer game and there will be many instances in which a player reacts to contact by writhing in pain on the grass as if death is hovering closely overhead. Players are carted off on stretchers like battlefield wounded only to return moments later without any visible evidence of injury. But officials cannot always distinguish flopping from genuine injury, which is not uncommon in the game.
There is a simple economic incentive that would deter flopping in soccer: If the injury is so great that the action must stop to attend to the player, then the player must stay out of the game for the remainder of the half. For those players who are truly injured this is no sanction at all. But it's a big penalty for floppers.
