The Oklahoma City Thunder are now two games away from back-to-back NBA Finals appearances. But throughout the regular season and the postseason, their MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has been labelled a flopper or even a free-throw merchant. To combat this, Dylan Harper’s father wants the San Antonio Spurs to start roughing up OKC stars.

“I wish players would start stepping on players as the flop hands chest fingers chest make them pay a price,” Ron Harper tweeted. His previous tweet was, “I’ll wait to explain what the @nba game is and who official the games…” Clearly, he has taken an exception to Thunder players and SGA falling on the floor to bait fouls. So, it seems he has taken the page from OKC’s book, which they aptly used in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals.

The Thunder won Game 2 at home, but it was clear what their tactics actually were. In order to stop Victor Wembanyama, they grabbed his arm, pulled him down when he was jumping, and even wrapped their arms around his body. Chet Holmgren intentionally stepped on Wemby’s foot during a free-throw sequence so that the Spurs star failed to collect the rebound. It was in Game 2 when Hartenstein blatantly pulled Castle’s hair, dropping him to the floor. Yet there was no whistle.

In fact, the play ended with Thunder hitting a three-pointer off the second chance. So, Dylan Harper’s father is suggesting only what the Spurs had faced in Game 2. There was even a clip on X, which generated over 17 million views with the caption, “Shai flopped on every single shot attempt.” It was a  36-second video that showed seven plays in which the two-time MVP ended up on the floor after contact.

So, Yahoo’s Tom Haberstroh watched over 1,300 shots from this postseason from five different known ‘foul baiters’ scorers to truly understand if any one star, namely SGA, is truly guilty of the ‘flopper tag’.

Dylan Harper’s father’s flopping accusation on SGA gets more steam

Haberstroh divided his study into two different metrics. One was non-fouled shots, and the other was fouled shots. So Gilgeous-Alexander fell on 20 of his 187 field-goal attempts, a rate of 10.7%, when on field-goal attempts that were not met with whistles. This was the highest in the category when compared with James Harden’s 8.7%, Jalen Brunson’s 7.9%, Donovan Mitchell’s 7.6%, and even Victor Wembanyama’s 0.6%. Now, there is another metric that hurts the current MVP’s reputation.

SGA has gotten fouled on 37 shots and has fallen on 19 of them. And after combining the two metrics from Haberstroh, “Gilgeous-Alexander is hitting the deck on 17.4% of his overall attempts in his playoff run — nearly four times the rate of the tall enjoyer of “pure and ethical basketball,” Wembanyama.” Even in Game 3, the Frost Bank Center erupted with “Flopper!” chants.

SGA came into Game 3 averaging nearly 10 foul shots per game this postseason, and on Friday, he went to the charity stripe 12 times. Clearly, the fans and Dylan Harper’s dad have the same sentiment when it comes to facing the Thunder.