10. James Harden

It would prove pretty difficult for someone to justify this flop from James Harden in the 2011 NBA playoffs as “part of the game.”

Well, technically Mark Jackson tried to defend the act against Jeff Van Gundy’s tirade in the video, but I find it incredibly difficult to agree with him. Your head coach, Golden State Warriors fans!

Anyway, there’s simply no place for this kind of flop in the NBA. Harden made the basket, so all he had to do was head back up the court to play some defense. Instead, he ran repeatedly into the awaiting chest of Tyson Chandler like a broken iRobot Roomba Vacuum before falling like a sack of flour to the court, clutching his face as if he’d lost an eye.

This equally egregious flop, while defending a Dwyane Wade back-down, is just another from Harden’s repertoire.

The shame of it all is that Harden is a fantastic NBA talent—the best 22-year-old in the game by my calculation. Yet he chooses to stain the game with plays like these.

In all fairness, however, it’s pretty difficult to place all the blame on Harden when the referees are the ones getting fooled and blowing the whistle like a lifeguard during a water slide accident.

9. Shane Battier

Shane Battier is a heady basketball player with fantastic defensive intangibles.

With that said, he’s also a notorious flopper.

In a piece written by Sporting News, Battier ranked seventh on a list of the 20 smartest athletes in sports, so we’ll give an invisible point to all basketball fans who defend flopping as a smart play.

Nevertheless, the Eastern Conference finals Game 4 flop by Battier against Paul Pierce (see video) was particularly heinous.

Most fans don’t want to see flopping in the NBA period, but on one of the biggest stages in basketball? How could the refs reward that flailing lunge that would have earned Battier a 0.0 score as an Olympic diver?

Beckley Mason of ESPN appropriately nominated it the “Flop of the Night.”

Apparently old habits die hard, because there’s even a YouTube clip of Battier flopping as a collegiate star at Duke University.

It’s a shame that Battier is seen as an infamous flopper when you consider that he’s one of the game’s best perimeter defenders.

He hounded Kevin Durant 25 to 28 feet from the basket throughout the NBA Finals, forcing Durant to have the quietest 28-point night and 32-point night we may ever see.

To use Internet meme language: “Shane! Y u flop so much?”

8. Derek Fisher

Once again we have evidence of a clear flop that Mark Jackson defends. We may have found our opposite flopping extremist to square off against Jeff Van Gundy in the Octagon.

Van Gundy defends referee Joe Crawford here by explaining that he had a “bad angle,” but I think it’s fair to say that Crawford is just a bad referee (take no offense Joe; keep in mind I’m a bitter fan myself).

Derek Fisher knows how to play to his strengths. He knew that he had a pretty poor chance of finishing off that transition layup (since he can’t throw down like LeBron James or Kevin Durant), but he sold the flop well, as he’s been doing for over a decade.

The fact that Fisher is adored in Los Angeles and just about nowhere else is due to his flopping pedigree.

When you think of “egregious floppers,” whether you’re a Los Angeles Lakers fan or not, Fisher has to be on the list somewhere.

It’s ironic that we find another grizzled, flopping veteran on the list who made it to this year’s NBA Finals.

Here’s another clip of Fisher flopping for good measure.

If I had a dollar for every time Fisher flopped to the ground running into a perfectly legal screen, there’s a chance I’d have earned the equivalent of Fisher’s $2,329,545 salary of 2012.