Steph Curry isn’t infallible after all.
After leading his team to a 113-106 win over the Houston Rockets in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals with 34 points, six rebounds, and five assists, the Golden State Warriors superstar received some confounding news from the league office. Thankfully, it has nothing to do with his adorable 2-year-old daughter’s starring turn at the post-game media lectern.
The NBA announced this morning that Curry has been fined $5,000 for violating its anti-flopping rules during Tuesday’s contest. The play in question occurred at the 3:07 mark of the fourth quarter.
See how Curry sticks out his right leg to create contact with Terrence Jones, then flails his left as the contact occurs? That’s presumably the justification for his fine, and it’s indeed warranted in the most basic sense possible.
Curry abandoned his natural shooting motion to goad officials into calling a foul, and embellished the minor contact he so obviously sought. Either way, though, this is still an absolutely incomprehensible fine.
The league levied three fines for flopping during the regular season, and offered three more throughout the playoffs before Curry’s. The most recent — and most egregious, in our opinion — one came courtesy of the Los Angeles Clippers’ Glen Davis on May 9.
Yet, Curry was somehow fined the same amount as Davis?
We’ve no idea why the league office decided to so harshly discipline the MVP for a basketball play that’s made on a nightly basis. The ESPN broadcast team even thought Curry was fouled on his trey after watching multiple angles of the play!
It’s not like there weren’t other opportunities for the league to wield a heavy flopping hand with the attention of a national audience, too; the laughable Draymond Green and Trevor Ariza tangle seems more worthy of scrutiny to us than Curry’s flop.
But we don’t make the decisions. If we did, though, we certainly wouldn’t so arbitrarily enforce a rule that’s done nothing to combat the problem at hand in the first place.
