The NBA’s Board of Governors voted this week to make the in-game flopping penalty a permanent part of the league rules, according to a press release. The rule, which charges the offending player with a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul and gives the opposing team a free throw attempt, was adopted ahead of the 2023/24 season on a one-year trial basis and will remain in place going forward.
The Board of Governors also approved a tweak to the tiebreaker rules for the NBA Cup (in-season tournament), removing overtime scoring for the purposes of the point differential and total points scored tiebreakers.
There were scenarios last season in which it would have benefited the winning team to play for overtime – where it could build a bigger margin of victory – rather than trying to win in regulation by a smaller margin. That won’t be the case under the new rules, as an NBA Cup group-stage game that goes to overtime will result in a point differential of zero for both teams, regardless of how the extra period plays out.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Anthony Gill is drawing interest from a pair of EuroLeague teams, according to Alessandro Maggi of Sportando, who says that Barcelona and Anadolu Efes are eyeing the veteran free agent forward. Gill has spent the past four seasons with the Wizards, appearing in 179 regular season games during that time, almost exclusively as a reserve.
- Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports takes a closer look at how the NBA’s new tax apron rules are impacting teams’ decisions this offseason, suggesting that players whose contracts are heavy on unlikely incentives may become harder to trade going forward. Wizards guard Jordan Poole, Heat guard Tyler Herro, and Nets forward Cameron Johnson are a few of those players, Fischer writes — their deals each include between $2.5MM and $4.25MM in annual incentives. Whether or not they’re earned, those incentives are counted when determining where a team is operating relative to the aprons.
- ESPN’s Brian Windhorst recaps Team USA’s Wednesday win over Serbia, while Joe Vardon of The Athletic provides a handful of takeaways from the squad’s time in Abu Dhabi, which also included an exhibition victory over Australia. Kevin Durant (calf strain) didn’t practice with the club in Abu Dhabi, but is hoping to get on the court in London during Team USA’s final stop before heading to Paris, Vardon writes. The U.S. will face South Sudan on Saturday and Germany on Monday in its last pre-Olympic tune-up games.
- The Clippers sent $4.3MM to the Jazz in the Russell Westbrook/Kris Dunn trade, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link), more than covering Westbrook’s $4.03MM salary for the 2024/25 season.