While watching football this weekend, my roommate and I got into a discussion about which professional sport is our favorite to watch on TV. While I prefer the NFL and NHL myself, my roommate is an avid NBA fan. The conversation eventually got around to one of my biggest complaints about the NBA; the flopping. It's gotten to the point where even the most minimal contact between two players ends with arms flailing and someone falling down, hoping to draw a call from the referees. This got me thinking about why flopping has become so widespread in sports like basketball and soccer and I believe it is an example of the prisoner's dilemma.
When two players (A and B) come into contact with each other they each have two options: to flop or not to flop. The table above shows these choices and the respective benefits to each player. If neither player flops, the play will continue on with no interruption and neither player better off than the other (0,0). If player A doesn't flop, then player B has an incentive to flop in order to get player A called for a foul and gain an advantage for his own team by shooting free throws(-2,1). The same is true for player A when player B does not flop(1,-2). This leads to a dominant strategy of flopping for both players. When both players follow their dominant strategy and flop, they end up both being laughed at on countless TV programs the following day as well as hurting their reputations as respectable players(-1,-1). In this case, the dominant strategies lead to an equilibrium where both players attempt to flop and end up worse off than if they had both decided to play fair and not flop.
As the ruling body or "government" in this situation, the NBA has decided to impose fines on those players who are caught flopping in an effort to move towards the preferred outcome with no flops. Despite these fines, sometimes players still decide to both flop, resulting in one of my favorite sports phenomena, the double flop:
No comments:
Post a Comment