There’s one thing that can throw a basketball game off more than anything else: foul trouble.
In the NBA, it can send a star to the bench, temporarily or permanently.
At every level of hoops, fouls are handled a little differently. That’s because the rules are different, and the length of games differs, too.
So if you’re wondering how it all works, we’ve got answers.
How many fouls does it take to foul out in the NBA?
A player needs to accrue six personal fouls to foul out of an NBA game.
That leads to different foul trouble strategies.
A coach will often sit a player with two fouls in the first quarter, three fouls in the second quarter or four fouls in the third quarter.
Once the fourth quarter rolls around, it’s trickier to decide whether a player should go to the bench with five fouls or stay in the game.
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How many technical fouls are an NBA ejection?
The other type of foul in the NBA is the technical foul, for various rules violations or misconduct.
It takes two technical fouls to be automatically ejected from an NBA game.
A referee can give both techs at once, or he can give one at a time. No matter what point in the game they come, if there are two of them in the same game, it equals an ejection.
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