King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Raja Bell plays hurt and helps the Suns win. He even flops hurt! Plus: Willis who? And: Dumb questions.

Read more: Sports, NBA, Basketball, King Kaufman, NBA playoffs, Sports Daily

May 31, 2006 | The comparisons to Willis Reed are a little out of hand, but Raja Bell's surprise start after missing two games with a calf injury was a big factor in the Phoenix Suns' Game 4 rout of the Dallas Mavericks Tuesday night.

Oops. I just bumped my keyboard, and somewhere in Phoenix, Raja Bell went flying.

Bell, who had been expected to miss most of the series after going down with a slight muscle tear in Game 1, scored nine points in 31 minutes and provided a defensive spark after deciding to play about a half-hour before the game. You have to respect a guy who can handle the pain and help his team like that.

But dear NBA, can you please once and for all do something about players flopping? Bell is one of the worst offenders, a Vlade-esque fall-down artist, a Reggie Miller-like my-God-I've-been-shot stuntman, a Rodmanish launcher of self at the slightest contact. Oh! There he goes again. Someone brushed by him at the Starbucks and he leapt backward through the window.

No, come on, really. I'm kidding. It wasn't a Starbucks.

The NBA sometimes makes an effort to do something about flopping by not calling the charge when a player goes down, letting him lie there as his player waltzes to the rim. I presume this happens on the nights the refs spin the wheel in their dressing room and it lands on "Don't call flops."

But this initiative never lasts long, and soon enough -- and almost always in the playoffs -- players are being rewarded for some of the worst acting this side of Keanu Reeves.

Did you see the charging foul Bell drew on Jerry Stackhouse Tuesday? He hurled himself backward after the slightest brush from the dribbling Maverick.

Bell may have been set. That call can almost always go either way and I have no beef with the refs on it even when they don't call a play the way I saw it. It's just too tough a call in most cases to be anything more than a coin flip.

But there was almost no contact. And here's the thing. The proper call shouldn't have been no call, as it would have been under the current NBA rules. The proper call should have been a technical on Bell.

Diving will never be eradicated. Players will always seek to gain an advantage any way they can, and on an already tough call like the block-charge play it's a decent bet that the referees will blow it and buy your act.

Next page: Flying bodies are a damn fake. Plus: Who's Willis Reed? And: Stupid question? Nah