Steve Christilaw: Art of flopping trending up, unfortunately

The crystal ball shows this happening any day now:

The local high school drama department will hold auditions for “Death of a Salesman” or “Oklahoma!” And a star athlete will walk on stage for the auditions.

There, under the klieg lights, the director will ask what he or she has prepared for their audition.

They will smile, immediately drop to the stage floor and clutch an ankle with a scream of pain and a face contorted in a well-affected grimace.

“Next!”

At least in the drama department they recognize over-acting.

If only that recognition were contagious.

It seems the real reason athletes need to stay in school before making the leap to professional sports: acting lessons.

There was a time when a flop was reserved for Broadway – the whole premise of Mel Brooks’ classic “The Producers” is based on the concept. Television (anyone remember “My Mother, The Car” or Magic Johnson’s talk show? Movie theaters are rife with them. I don’t just want my money back for some of them (think “Ishtar,” for example), I want two hours of my life back.

The Harlem Globetrotters had a great routine about it – just like they had a great routine about so many different aspects of the game. A player would go down with an injury, everyone would gather around to tend to him. He would be carried off the court only to loudly proclaim that he’d actually hurt his other leg.

At least it was intended to be funny.

But in 2013, then-Boston Celtic Paul Pierce pulled that exact trick in a playoff game with the Lakers. He fell to floor, clutching his knee and writhing in pain. His teammates even carried him off the court and he was taken to the locker room in a wheelchair. Not even two minutes later he trotted back onto the court and returned to the game with nary a limp.

No one laughed, but the Celtics cheered his return.

Basketball is rife with overacting, and it would be funny if it weren’t effective, especially for the game’s best players. You know, the ones who really don’t need another advantage.

LeBron James is a master of the art form.

Believe it or not, hockey has its share of floppers, although the sport seems to treat them with a certain level of scorn.

It’s so bad that while watching coverage of the Calgary Stampede over the weekend I saw a horse in the bronc riding event fall to the dirt midbuck.

Since there is no call to be made in the sport of rodeo, it immediately jumped back up and finished the eight-second ride, but it gave the cowboy a wicked glance on the way out of the arena.

Soccer is the mecca of the art form, and thankfully, the World Cup seemed to be willing to crack down – not on the actual flopping but on overacting.

Brazilian superstar Neymar, an acknowledged grand master of over-the-top flopping, was duly ridiculed. After a particularly affected flop in a 2-0 win over Serbia, in which he rolled on the turf (And rolled. And rolled again), KFC in South Africa produced a commercial in which a player falls to turf and rolls all the way out of the stadium, down the street and into a KFC, where he pops up and puts in an order for extra crispy.

Flopping is now considered a skill, and the need for solid thespian ability grows along with the level of play. Perhaps it has something to do with the size of the stage on which the game is played out, but you can bet the concept of manufacturing a call all by yourself will continue to seep lower and lower.

Somewhere out there a peewee soccer team is training kids to fall to the turf, clutch an ankle and roll over a few times. Call it the “Neymar Drill.” And somewhere, in a driveway all by themselves, a youngster is practicing his exaggerated fall skill, their arms flapping in circles while they stagger backwards, a la LeBron.

Really?

Just once I would like to see an NBA referee stand over a superstar player who has just over-sold a phantom foul and clap. Not an applause clap. The mocking, slow clap that we reserve for derision.

Or maybe answer the flop with a flop of his own – you know, “anything you can do, I can do better.”

Since he’s now in Los Angeles, perhaps Jack Nicholson can jump up from his center-court, front-row seat and show LeBron how to really sell a pratfall.

And just once, it would be great to see a packed soccer stadium stand, in unison, and applaud a Neymaresque flop.

Officiating has proven to be ineffective, even inept at dealing with the growing trend.

Perhaps open mockery will work better.