The NBA has been giving fines and technical fouls this season for flopping violations this season. Denver Nuggets starting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is the most recent player to get in trouble. Yesterday, the NBA said that Caldwell-Pope would be fined $2,000 for dancing in the third quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Houston Rockets:
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was assessed a Flopping fine of $2,000 for this play last night in Houston. pic.twitter.com/1KzYq9ThWz
— Harrison Wind (@HarrisonWind) November 13, 2023
In real-time, the refs praised Pope’s performance because Dillon Brooks was given an offensive foul on the play. However, the league has since admitted that Pope messed up. The league’s report is not part of their “Last Two Minute Report,” so it doesn’t say if the play was still called properly even though Pope blew up the contact. However, they have decided that the Nuggets forward broke the flopping rule.
As we already said, the NBA has put a lot of effort into stopping cheating this season. Players are getting fined after games are reviewed, and if officials decide they flopped during the game, they are also getting technical fouls. This only happened sometimes in the past, but the league wanted to keep the game as fair as possible and saw that flopping was becoming too much on both attack and defense.
Pope is going to have to pay $2,000 for his latest mistake against the Rockets.
