Blitz said:
What I hate to see nowadays along with the defensive flooping, is when a player gets a defender up in the air then leaps toward them and feins "shot".
Or when they ballhandler is fouled on the floor but tries to convince the officials that they are in the act of shooting.
If that's what folks call "the game evolving" then I'd just as soon have the 70 and 80s back all over again.
That ****'s been around for decades and decades. Head-faking and getting the defender in the air and then jumping into him was de rigeur back in the 1960s/70s. That used to be half of Oscar Robertson's game (back the defender down, head-fake him into the air, duck under him as he comes down, go shoot 2 free throws).
Along with "continuation" / hurling up a wild heave as soon as you draw contact in order to get a shooting foul. Earl Monroe was big on that, and before him Bob Cousy.
The fairyboy arm-flailing flopping IS a new development in the last couple of decades.
In the olden days when you tried to draw a charging foul, the idea was to plant your feet like they were bolted to the floor, the opponent runs into you like a telephone pole and is knocked backwards, almost out cold, to the floor, while you stand there smirking.
And the refs would call it that way. If you were planted you got the call.
But a couple decades ago the refs decided that unless you were knocked backwards ass over teakettle with your arms flailing wildly in the wind, you must not have been hit very hard, so they started calling it the other way -- if you were left standing after the play, the foul must have been on you. However if you do a backwards somersault with your arms spinning like a windmill, you must have been fouled.
As a result, we get all this fruitbag flopping.