LeBron James Got Hit With A Flopping Warning For A Foul He Drew Against The Grizzlies

Flopping: People don’t like it! NBA players are no strangers to embellishing contact, and it’s not exactly something that is new to the league, either. There are, of course, some dudes who don’t like doing it, but plenty of guys in the league will try their best to trick referees into giving them a whistle.

One such player who understands this is LeBron James, who is among the league’s best at the dark art of the flop. The issue for James is that this is a reputation that follows him every now and then, and on Friday night in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 115-105 win over the Memphis Grizzlies, James’ propensity for seeking out a whistle came back to bite him.

During the second quarter of action, Anthony Davis missed a jumper that was corralled by Grayson Allen. James, however, flailed his arms about and was able to draw a foul on Dillon Brooks, then got to the charity stripe and hit a pair of free throws. As a result, the league hit James with a flopping warning on Saturday.

And now, it is time for a brief defense of flopping. It is unclear why LeBron James should not try to take advantage of the fact that he knows that the referees will have a quick whistle and give him the benefit of the doubt in the moment. Drawing a foul and potentially getting two points at the free throw line gives the Lakers two more points, which means his flopping gets them closer to scoring more points than the other basketball team, which is the thing you need to do if you would like to win a game. As an added bonus, it draws a foul on an opposing player, meaning they inch one step closer to the six fouls that a player is allowed to draw before they are disqualified.

There is a financial penalty for flopping, yes, but for someone like James, it is extremely easy to not care about this. Should he flop and get called on it, the league will respond with a warning, and then, if he keeps doing it, a fine of $5,000 that goes up by $5,000 each time will be assessed. By a quick iPhone calculation, just going off of James’ annual $39.22 million salary (not including the fact that he is, you know, worth at least nine figures due to off-court stuff he has going on), a fine of $5,000 is 0.00012749 percent of what he makes. Perhaps it is a bit silly to waste one of these flopping warnings for a regular season tilt against the Grizzlies as opposed to, say, in a playoff battle with the Utah Jazz, but the point stands: this ain’t a lot to LeBron.

Anyway, in case it was not obvious, I like soccer.