Wow, a lot of big news in the NBA today!
The biggest is that both Mike D’Antoni and Avery Johnson are going to be on the coaching market. This makes Donnie Walsh look pretty good for not making a coaching decision already, as it’s not every year that two former Coaches of the Year fall into your lap. Of the two, I think Johnson probably fits in better with the Knicks, but I think D’Antoni is the better coach of the two. Also note that D’Antoni is the only one of the two who is leaving his team on his own volition, Avery is being fired - D’Antoni is gone because he doesn’t want to have to answer to Steve Kerr anymore.
As someone else mentioned, Steve Nash better be hurt, because he looked terrible against the Spurs last night, including a number of turnovers toward the end of the game. I felt bad for Nash on one of them, which was a tough luck turnover (he had the ball knocked out of his hands, but Nash clearly touched it last), but the others were just awful.
Is there anything Phoenix can do differently next year? #15 in the draft is unlikely to be much of a help to them, to the point that I would consider trading it. Kerr is concerned about Nash not having a backup, which is fair enough, I suppose, but I do not know if that really was that big of a deal for the Suns.
Dallas, on the other hand, looks like they need a shake-up. I don’t like the idea of pinning this on Dirk, though, so I would still try to build around him. Dirk won’t turn 30 until June, so he still has a number of good years in him, so I wouldn’t try to move him for a few years, but if they get a great offer, then perhaps.
As to flopping - the reason I think there should be a flopping foul is because there isn’t enough of a penalty for a player flopping. You might say that the defender’s man would have an open lane to the basket, but surely the defender takes that into consideration, and weighs that into the likelihood of whether the ref will call the foul or not and goes for it. If the defender also had to figure in the chances of the ref calling him for a foul, then I think we would see a change in the way players flop. Like I mentioned, the NHL had the same exact problem, and they created a penalty for it. It’s unsportsmanlike behavior, and I think it should be addressed. What reason is there for the NBA to allow flopping?
Soccer, where flopping was pretty much invented, has a flopping rule.
The problem with it is that it’s a yellow card, which is a pretty severe penalty, so referees are reluctant to call it.
Fans, on the other hand, absolutely love when an opposing player gets hit with one.