Does Flopping Work In Basketball?
Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - 16:40
in Psychology & Sociology
In the United States, professional basketball, the NBA, opens its regular season tonight. That means at this time tomorrow there will be talk that some player 'flopped' - fell on the ground to draw a foul and get a chance at a free basket. A new analysis has found that two-thirds of the falls examined by the group at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev were found to be intentional. And it happens a lot. It happens so much because there is insufficient punishment for deception and teams are not doing the math. A cost/benefit analysis of "flopping" finds that 90 percent of the time no penalty is awarded, so as a strategy it is pointless. read more