The4thHorseman wrote:The Pistons Bill Laimbeer was a master of the flop. Then taught teammate Rodman the art of embellishing little to no contact.
Laimbeer was a well established flopper. Rodman also for sure. They are perceived as tougher guys though, and they are as far as I know, but just a reminder that flopping isn't really about being tough or strong or not.
AdagioPace wrote:og15 wrote:Who popularized it for the modern day? I'd say the Spurs, Manu most prominently and this is not said in n a derogatory way, but the Spurs had one of the more recent (last 20 years) teams that won a lot while having some contact embelishers on their team (Manu, Oberto, Bowen, Parker a bit too). Guys on teams losing to them look at that and say, "hmm, it seems to work out".
Then other guys moved it on of course, and while it's always hard to pin point something like that to just one source, I'd say they were the catalyst.
Of course it's been a build up, guys were flopping since the inception of the game, we also previously had less immediately accessible media to watch every flopping clip and compile them like we have in our YouTube era. Frank Ramsey was making a living out of it and "wrote the book" literally on the art of ref deception, and there have always been floppers, more than many realized or noticed with less media exposure.
I would say the Spurs helped to "popularize" it for the current generation of players though, because they were the ones winning with noticeable floppers, and some guys took that as "this works".
you make it sound like a corporate goal by the spurs which is quite offensive and hyperbolic..come on.
If anything, Spurs won games and titles while employing a
heavy-contact defensive strategy,....basically the opposite.
as Scabbarista pointed out, you had plenty of american floppers in the 90s but the usual foreign-flopper stereotype is hard to erase
I understand that it can be triggering because everyone wants to dissociate their favorite team and players from flopping. I didn't make it sound like a goal, I specifically said they popularized it because they were the team that won a lot. I specifically mentioned that flopping has a long history basically to the first decade of the sport. Nothing there suggest some cooperate agenda. If they had won less, they wouldn't be as influencial in flopping for the modern era, but they won...a lot.
Things get more popular the more it is seen as tied to winning. Just like the 3PT shooting expansion moved forward as people saw it tied more to winning. The question being who "popularized" flopping and not who "started" flopping or who was the most egregious, popularized is the key word in the question.
Toughness and flopping are not mutually exclusive, actually my reply just above this is the perfect example. What are the Bad Boy Pistons known for? Toughness, hard hitting, heavy contact, hard nosed defense and two of their guys were pretty blatant floppers.
So no, heavy contact defensive strategy is not the opposite of flopping, in fact many times they can go well hand in hand. You beat on the other team, but if they beat you back on either end, you embellish here and there and make it harder for them to do the same thing.
It's a double whammy that can frustrate opponents even further.