Ken Clark did it for science.
It was 2014, and Clark, then a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, was part of a biomechanics group tasked by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with studying – and perhaps fixing – flopping, basketball’s dark, daffy art of fooling referees into calling fouls that aren’t.
Like all researchers, the SMU team needed data. Specifically, collision data. The underlying idea, Clark tells the Guardian, was “what if we just imagine people like billiard balls and go from there?” And that’s how Clark, his colleagues, and some hardy student volunteers found themselves in a campus lab, slamming each other off their feet, over and over again, as sensors captured every pileup.
Years after a company owned by Cuban gave a six-figure grant to SMU to investigate a perpetual hoops quandary that leaves game officials perplexed and fans apoplectic –
flop or not? – the school’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory has released its findings in an
amusing and informative video that breaks down everything you wanted to know about the physics of flopping, but probably never thought to ask.
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Reality Check: In the NBA, there are two types of players. Those who have flopped, and those who haven’t – yet.
LeBron James flops.
Chris Paul flops.
Stephen Curry flops. Hoops history’s attic is crammed with Oscar-worthy efforts: a
Vlade Divac pratfall here, a
Dwyane Wade tumble there, a truly magnificent
offense-defense double dive from Manu Ginobili and Raja Bell, the flopping equivalent of
the Al Pacino-Robert DeNiro diner face-off in Heat.
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Why Does It Matter: Basketball fans love to see the good guys get away with some well-timed ersatz contact; they get irate when the bad guys pull the same trick.
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Yes, But: To stop flopping, however, you first have to spot flopping – yet by definition, a good flop is indistinguishable in real time from a genuine foul.
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Of Note: SMU biomechanics professor Peter Weyand, a former basketball player at Bates, and his team ran three experiments. All three told the same story. It doesn’t take much to knock someone standing upright off balance – just 50 lbs for a quarter of a second, roughly the same as walking or lightly jogging into someone.
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Be Smart: Two conclusions: First, during natural two-person collisions, the stationary recipient will fall backwards with their arms out – but not up, and certainly not high enough to direct traffic on an aircraft carrier flight deck.
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Go Deeper with
Patrick Hruby for the Guardian
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