NBA Carrying Rule: What Makes a Dribble a Carry

A crossover that freezes a defender usually has one instant in it where the ball sits in the dribbler's hand longer than the eye expects. If that instant is long enough, and the hand is far enough under the ball, the NBA rulebook calls it a carry: a violation, a turnover, and the ball to the other team from the sideline. Most of the time nobody blows a whistle. That gap between what the rule says and what gets called is the main reason fans search for it.

The NBA carrying rule is short. During a dribble, a player may not put any part of his hand under the ball and carry it from one point to another, or bring it to a pause and then continue dribbling. Either act ends the dribble, so another bounce afterward is illegal. The penalty is loss of the ball, with a throw-in from the nearest sideline no closer to the baseline than the free throw line extended. No foul is charged, no free throws are shot, and the call cannot be reviewed. The same principle runs through college, high school and international basketball, which is why the violation also goes by its older name, palming.

The NBA carrying rule as the dribble section writes it

The carry sits in Rule 10, Section II, the dribble part of the NBA's violations rule, and it leans on the definition of a dribble in Rule 4, Section II. The NBA's definition is shorter than most people expect: a dribble is movement of the ball, caused by a player in control, who throws or taps the ball to the floor. The same section lists how a dribble ends. The dribbler contacts the ball with both hands at once, permits it to come to rest while he is in control of it, shoots, passes, touches it more than once before it hits the floor, loses control, lets the ball become dead, or otherwise gathers it.

The carry is the second item on that list wearing a different hat. A ball that comes to rest in the hand has ended the dribble. A player who then bounces it again has dribbled twice. Carrying is a specific description of how the first dribble ended, with the hand rolled underneath the ball.

Two acts, one violation

Rule 10, Section II puts it in one sentence: a player who is dribbling may not put any part of his hand under the ball and either carry it from one point to another or bring it to a pause and then continue to dribble again. That names two ways to carry.

The first is moving the ball with the hand under it. A dribbler turns his palm up, scoops the ball from one side of his body to the other, and puts it back on the floor. The ball did not bounce from one hand to the other. It rode.

The second is bringing it to a pause. The ball reaches the top of its bounce, the hand settles under it, and for a moment nothing moves. Then the player pushes it down again. He has not carried it anywhere, but he has held it, and holding it ended the dribble.

Both acts need the hand under the ball. A pause with the hand on top, or the ball resting against the side of the fingers, is not what the rule describes, even though it can look similar at full speed.

The rule does not care about intent. A ball that rolls into the palm because the dribbler mistimed a high bounce is a carry if he then dribbles on. Nor does it care about advantage, in the strict reading. In practice NBA officials look much harder at carries that gain something, a theme that runs through the rest of this page.

Where it sits beside the gather

Since the NBA wrote a definition of the gather into Rule 4, Section III, the phrase about a hand under the ball bringing it to a pause has done double duty. The dribble-ends list in Rule 4 even closes with "or otherwise gathers the ball," which folds the two rules together. In the gather definition it describes the moment a driver stops dribbling and starts his step count. In the dribble rule it describes a carry. The act is identical. What follows decides which it is: a pass, a shot or a legal stop makes it a gather, and another dribble makes it a carry. That link between the two rules is the subject of our page on the NBA's continuation rule, where the gather marks the start of a shot.

The two tests an official applies to a dribble

Officials are not taught to look for a "carry" as a whole. They are taught to watch for two separate things and to call the violation when both are present.

The first test is the position of the hand. Is any part of it under the ball, meaning below the ball's equator on the side facing the floor? A hand on top is legal. A hand on the side is legal. A hand cupped underneath, palm facing up, is the warning sign.

The second test is the ball's motion. Did it come to rest, or travel with the hand? A ball that is pushed down from a side grip without stopping is a dribble. A ball that hangs in the cupped hand, even briefly, has paused.

1. 1Watch the top of the bounceMost carries happen at the highest point of the dribble, where the ball is slowest and the hand meets it.
2. 2Test one: the handIs any part of the palm under the ball, facing up, rather than on the top or side?
3. 3Test two: the ballDid the ball come to rest in the hand, or move with it from one point to another?
4. 4Check what followsIf the player shoots, passes or stops, the pause was the end of the dribble. If he bounces it again, it is a carry.
5. 5Signal and awardThe official rotates his hand to signal the violation and awards a throw-in to the other team.

The order of judgments an official makes on a suspected carry under the NBA dribble rule. Both tests must be met; a hand under the ball with no pause, or a pause with the hand on top, is not a carry.

Why the tests are applied at the top of the bounce

The ball is slowest when the bounce peaks and the dribbler's hand meets it. That is where the opportunity to cradle it exists and where the official's eyes go. A carry at knee height on a quick dribble is almost impossible: the ball is moving too fast to rest anywhere. A carry at chest height on a slow, high dribble is easy.

What an official cannot see

A trailing official watching from behind the dribbler sees the back of the hand, which hides the palm. A lead official underneath the basket sees the ball from the front. The official best placed to judge a carry is usually the one looking at the dribbler's side, which is why carries tend to be called by whoever has the ball handler in his primary coverage on the sideline. When the wrong angle is the only angle, the call does not get made.

Why a hand on the side or the top is legal, and why a dribble has no height limit

The NBA rulebook contains no limit on how high a player may bounce the ball. It describes a dribble by what the hand does, not by where the ball goes. A dribble that comes up to the player's eyes is legal. So is one that comes up over his head, which is rare only because it is hard to control.

The rule's permissiveness about the hand on the side of the ball is the most important thing to understand about modern ball handling. A player dribbling at speed changes direction by pushing the ball from the side. His hand comes over the outside of the ball and shoves it across his body. That is legal. The hand is on the side, the ball is moving the whole time, and it never rests.

The side-of-the-ball grip

What separates a modern crossover from a carry is a matter of degrees. Literally. A hand on the side, with the fingers pointed toward the floor, is pushing. A hand that has rotated another thirty or forty degrees so that the fingers point sideways and the palm faces up is under the ball. The rule does not give an angle. Officials look for the palm facing up.

The wrist can turn without crossing that line. A dribbler whose hand starts on top, slides to the side as he pushes the ball across, and turns at the wrist as he follows through has not carried. His palm never faced up while the ball was in it.

High dribbles draw attention, not violations

A high dribble is more likely to be called a carry because the hand has more time with the ball at the top of the bounce. That is a practical observation, not a rule. A player with soft hands can bounce it high and stay legal. One without can carry it at waist height.

Hand position on the ball	Ball comes to rest?	Ruling
On top, pushing down	No	Legal dribble
On the side, pushing across	No	Legal dribble
On the side, ball resting against fingers	Brief pause	Officials' judgment; usually not called
Under the ball, palm up	No pause, but ball moves with the hand	Carry if he dribbles again
Under the ball, palm up	Ball pauses	Carry if he dribbles again
Under the ball, palm up	Ball pauses, player then shoots or passes	Legal end of dribble

The last row is the one that settles most arguments. A palm under the ball is not, by itself, a violation. It becomes one only if the dribble resumes.

The moves that live on the line: hesitation, in-and-out, high crossover and hang dribble

Every ball handler in the league uses moves that brush against the rule, and the best ones make a living from that brush.

The hesitation

A hesitation dribble is a change of pace. The ball handler slows abruptly, sometimes with a slight rise of the shoulders or a head fake, to make his defender think he is stopping, then explodes past. The ball keeps bouncing throughout. The hesitation is legal as long as the ball never rests in the palm, and in nearly every case it does not: the dribbler keeps his hand on top and simply waits a fraction of a second longer before pushing the ball down.

The hesitation becomes a carry when the dribbler sells the stop by actually stopping the ball. A hand that comes under the ball and holds it at the top of the bounce for a beat has paused it.

The in-and-out

An in-and-out fakes a crossover without crossing. The dribbler pushes the ball toward his other hand, then pulls it back with the same hand before it gets there. To pull the ball back, the hand must get around the outside of it, and the temptation is to roll the palm under the ball and drag it. Done with the hand on the side, the move is legal. Done with the palm up and the ball riding in it, the move is a carry.

The high crossover

A high crossover sends the ball across the body at chest height or higher. It is a show move more than a functional one, and it is called as a carry more than any other crossover, because the high bounce gives the hand time to settle.

The hang dribble

The hang dribble is the hardest to judge. The ball handler lets the ball hang at the top of a high bounce while his body moves around it, so that the ball appears to float. Officials watch for the palm. If it is on top or the side, the ball is floating, and the move is legal. If it is underneath, the ball is resting.

Move	Legal version	Carry version
Hesitation	Hand on top, ball keeps bouncing through the pause	Hand slides under the ball and holds it at the peak
In-and-out	Hand on the side of the ball, pushing it back	Palm rolls under the ball and drags it back
High crossover	Ball pushed from the side across the body	Ball scooped from below and carried across
Hang dribble	Ball floats at the top with the hand on top or side	Ball rests in an upturned palm before the next push
Spin move	Ball stays on the hand's side as the body turns	Ball cradled through the spin and dribbled again

The penalty and the restart after a carry

A carry is a violation, not a foul. That distinction drives everything about the penalty.

The ball goes to the other team. Rule 10's penalty wording is that the ball is awarded on the sideline nearest the spot of the violation but no nearer the baseline than the foul line extended, which is the same line the rest of the book calls the free throw line extended. A carry committed deep in a corner is taken out at the free throw line extended, so the new team is not stuck inbounding from beside the basket.

No free throws are shot. No personal foul is charged to anyone. No team foul goes on the scoreboard, so a carry does nothing to move a team toward the penalty. The new team gets a full shot clock, because a change of possession resets it.

• 0Free throws awarded
• 0Personal fouls charged
• 0Team fouls charged
• 24Shot clock for the new team

The consequences of a carry under NBA rules. A violation changes possession but charges no foul and awards no free throws; the shot clock resets on the change of possession.

The game clock

The game clock stops on the whistle and, under Rule 5, restarts when the ball is legally touched by a player inside the playing area. In the last two minutes of a game a carry is especially costly, because it stops the clock in the same way a foul does, but gives the defense the ball rather than free throws, and the defense's possession then starts with a fresh 24 seconds.

When it gets called in the backcourt

A carry committed in the backcourt hands the ball to the other team in its frontcourt, a short throw-in from the side. Point guards who are pressured full court and try to escape with exaggerated crossovers give the defense a good chance at that, and pressing teams know it.

Carry, double dribble or travel: telling the three ball-handling violations apart

Three violations cover nearly every ball-handling error in the NBA, and fans regularly confuse them. They share a penalty and differ in what the official saw.

A carry is about the hand and the ball. The ball came to rest in an upturned palm, or moved with it, and the player then dribbled again.

A double dribble is the related violation of dribbling with both hands at the same time, or starting a second dribble after the first has ended in any other way, for instance by catching the ball with two hands. Our guide to the double dribble violation in the NBA explains the variants. Technically, a carry is a specific kind of second dribble, but the NBA writes it as its own sentence in Rule 10 and officials report it with its own gesture.

A travel is about the feet. A player holding the ball moved them more than the rule allows, or lifted his pivot foot before releasing the ball to start a dribble. The steps are counted from the gather, which is the same hand-under-the-ball moment a carry turns on.

Violation	What the official saw	Gesture you will see	Penalty
Carrying or palming	Hand under the ball, ball paused or moved, then another dribble	Hand rotated palm up, then over	Loss of ball, sideline throw-in
Double dribble	Two hands on the dribble, or a second dribble after the first ended	Patting motion with both hands alternating	Loss of ball, sideline throw-in
Traveling	Illegal movement of the feet while holding the ball	Fists rotated around each other	Loss of ball, sideline throw-in
Kicked ball	Ball intentionally kicked or struck with any part of the leg	Pointing toward the foot	Ball to the opponents, sideline throw-in

Where they overlap

A player who palms the ball while moving can commit two violations at once. When the hand goes under the ball and it pauses, his dribble has ended and his step count has started. If he takes three steps before dribbling again, he has traveled. If he takes one step and dribbles again, he has carried. The official calls whichever happened first in the sequence, which is usually the carry.

The footwork side is detailed in our explainer on two steps after the gather.

The signal, and why a carry cannot be reviewed or challenged

The gesture is a single hand turned over: the official holds his hand out palm up and rotates it so the palm faces the floor, mimicking what the dribbler did, then points in the direction the ball is going. The NBA rulebook itself prints no chart of officials' signals, so this one is learned by watching rather than read off a page.

Fans who see the rotation and think "travel" are reading the wrong gesture. Traveling is two fists rolled around each other, which mimics moving feet.

Outside replay's reach

A carry is a judgment about the hand and the ball made in real time, and the NBA has never put it on the list of plays replay can examine. Rule 14 gives a coach three challengeable events and no more: a called personal foul charged to his own team, a called out-of-bounds violation where his own team was not awarded possession, and a called goaltending or basket interference, the last of which cannot be challenged in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. Each team gets one challenge and a second if the first succeeds. The rule goes out of its way to say that traveling and carrying are not challengeable. The replay center in Secaucus, New Jersey, cannot reach a carry under any of Rule 13's own triggers either.

That makes it unusual among calls that decide possession. A coach whose team was not given the ball on an out-of-bounds call can challenge it at any point in the game. A carry on the same possession, which takes the ball away just as surely, is final the moment it is signaled. The structure of the challenge and review system is laid out in our replay review rules explainer.

Why the league leaves it that way

There are two practical reasons. A carry is often visible only from one angle and at full speed, and slowed video makes nearly every crossover look worse, because the tenth of a second the ball spends in the hand looks like a pause when it is frozen. And a reviewable carry would invite a challenge on every possession that ended in a turnover. The league has preferred to let it stay a floor call.

Why the carry is called in bursts

The carrying rule has not changed meaningfully in decades. The calling of it has.

The NBA periodically names areas it wants officials to watch, called points of emphasis, and ball handling has been on that list more than once. When it is, preseason games and the first weeks of the regular season produce a cluster of carry calls, players complain, and the calls taper off as ball handlers adjust and officials settle back into their usual standard.

Ball handling has come back around as a talking point several times in the last decade, usually after a run of early-season calls that players and broadcasters described as a crackdown. The league does not publish its internal officiating memos in full, and this guide does not have a documented date for any single carrying directive, so the most reliable record of what referees were told is what they called. The calls have followed the familiar pattern each time: a burst, then a return to the norm.

What a point of emphasis looks for

The behavior a carry emphasis targets is specific. Officials are asked to watch the hesitation and the in-and-out, where the palm is most likely to turn under the ball, and the pause at the top of a high dribble. They are not asked to call every crossover.

Why carries are called so rarely

The honest answer has three parts. Officials are trained to call violations that gave an advantage, and most mild carries gain nothing. The officials' angles often hide the palm. And the modern side-of-the-ball dribble is legal, which means a large part of what looks like a carry to a fan is not one under the rule.

That is a defensible reading of the rule. It also means the NBA standard is looser in practice than the rulebook's text implies, and players know it.

How the dribble changed: from a hand on top to the crossover era

The dribble began as an awkward way to move the ball and became the sport's main weapon. Early players dribbled with the hand on top of the ball, which made it hard to change direction quickly but kept the ball well inside the rule.

Bob Cousy's behind-the-back dribble in the 1950s and Earl Monroe's spins in the 1960s and 1970s pushed the hand toward the side of the ball. Pete Maravich made ball handling a show. Each of them moved the hand a little further around the ball, and the rule absorbed it.

The crossover era changed that. Tim Hardaway's crossover with Golden State in the early 1990s, which he called the "UTEP two-step" after his college, used a low, hard push across the body. Allen Iverson arrived with Philadelphia in 1996-97 and made the crossover the most talked-about move in the game, including a famous one on Michael Jordan in March 1997.

The late-1990s arguments about palming

Iverson's crossover used a hand that slid well around the side of the ball, and critics at the time argued he was carrying it. Coaches, broadcasters and some former players made the case. Iverson's defenders made the opposite one: his hand was on the side, the ball was moving, and the move only looked illegal because of how fast it was.

The league's response, broadly, was to let the crossover live. Officials were reminded what a carry was, and the obvious palm-up scoops were called. The sliding side grip was accepted as legal.

That settlement is still in place. Most modern ball handling is built on a side grip that a coach from the 1960s would have taught as a carry. Under the rule's actual text, it is not one, and that has been true the whole time.

Why the change was mostly cultural

The carrying rule's text is almost identical to what it was before the crossover era. What moved was the officials' sense of where the line sat, and that moved with the players.

The standard below the NBA: college, high school and youth basketball

College basketball has a men's and a women's rules book, each with its own NCAA rules committee, and high school basketball is governed by the National Federation of State High School Associations. All of them define a dribble and end it when the ball comes to rest in the hand, and they get to the carry that way rather than with a sentence of their own about the hand going underneath.

FIBA, the international federation, does the same: its dribble ends when the player touches the ball with both hands at once or permits it to come to rest in one or both hands. The NBA is the outlier for being explicit. Rule 10, Section II names the act, which is why American fans have a phrase for it and why the violation still answers to its older name, palming.

Code	How the carry is written	Height limit on a dribble	Penalty
NBA	Stated outright in Rule 10, Section II: a hand under the ball that carries or pauses it, then another dribble	None	Loss of ball, sideline throw-in no nearer the baseline than the foul line extended
NCAA	Reached through the dribble ending when the ball comes to rest in the hand	None	Loss of ball, throw-in nearest the spot
NFHS high school	Reached through the dribble ending when the ball comes to rest in the hand	None	Loss of ball, throw-in nearest the spot
FIBA	Reached through the dribble ending when the ball comes to rest in one or both hands	None	Loss of ball, throw-in nearest the spot

Does the standard really differ?

The texts are close. The officiating is not, at least in the common experience of coaches and players: high school and youth officials call carries more readily than college officials, and college officials more readily than the NBA. Part of that is skill: younger players make more obvious errors. Part is philosophy. Lower levels treat officiating as teaching, and a carry called on a 13-year-old is a lesson.

Players who move up a level adjust. NBA players who go to the Olympics meet a FIBA dribble rule that reaches the same place by a shorter route, so any gap they notice is in how strictly the officials apply it rather than in what the books say. Our FIBA and NBA rulebook comparison covers the other gaps, and our page on the differences between college and pro basketball takes in the NCAA side.

What a legal hesitation looks like, frame by frame

A frame-by-frame look at a legal hesitation shows how narrow the line is and how a good ball handler stays on the right side of it.

Frame one: the approach

The dribbler is moving at speed with the ball on his right side, hand on top. The defender is in front, retreating.

Frame two: the slowdown

The dribbler lifts his chest and slows his feet. The ball is coming up to meet his hand. His palm is still on top.

Frame three: the top of the bounce

The ball reaches its peak. The dribbler's hand meets it on the top and the outside, fingers pointed down and slightly out. The ball does not rest. It is decelerating, but it is pushed down again before it stops.

Frame four: the push

The hand pushes the ball down and forward, and the dribbler explodes past. The ball never sat in the palm.

1. 1Approach at speedThe ball handler dribbles with the hand on top of the ball and the defender retreating.
2. 2Sell the stopChest rises and feet slow. The ball comes up to the hand with the palm still on top.
3. 3Meet the ball at the peakThe hand catches the ball on the top and outside, fingers down and slightly out, with no pause.
4. 4Push and explodeThe hand drives the ball down and forward before it can rest, and the ball handler goes by.
5. 5The carry versionIf the palm had rolled under the ball at the peak and held it, the next bounce would be a violation.

An illustration of a legal hesitation under the NBA dribble rule. The decisive frame is the top of the bounce, where a hand that slides under the ball and holds it turns the same move into a carry.

The point at which a good hesitation and a carry diverge is frame three. A ball handler with strong fingers and good timing keeps the hand on top and pushes. One who lets the palm slide under the ball, to keep it from bouncing away while he sells the stop, has paused it. The ball handlers who make a career of this move, often the isolation scorers who live in one-on-one possessions, practice that frame more than any other part of it.

The misreadings: the legal wrist turn, the illegal pause, and why fast moves look worse than they are

Three things fool fans more than anything else about carrying.

The first is the wrist turn. A ball handler's wrist turns on most crossovers, because the hand starts on top and finishes on the side as it pushes the ball across. Viewers see the wrist rotate and assume the palm turned up. Usually it did not. The rotation was at the wrist, not at the palm, and the ball never rested.

The second is the pause that really is illegal. A ball that hangs in an upturned palm at the top of the bounce, even for an instant, has come to rest. Fans who accept the side grip as legal sometimes miss the opposite case: a handler who is not moving quickly and who lets the ball settle before pushing it on. That is a carry, and it is called less than it should be.

The third is speed. At full speed, a legal side-grip crossover looks like a carry, because the eye cannot follow the hand and the ball separately. Slowed down, the same move often shows the hand on the side and the ball moving. The opposite is also true of slow-motion replays that freeze a frame at the top of a bounce: a frozen frame always shows the ball in the hand, because at that instant it is.

Which way the errors run

Fans see more carries than exist. Officials call fewer than exist. Both are true. The rule sits between them, and a careful viewer with a good angle can tell the difference. Most viewers do not have the angle, and so the argument continues.

For the ball handlers at the center of all this, the ones whose job is to bring the ball up and run the offense, our page on the point guard's role covers what else the position demands. The rest of the NBA's rules guides are collected in our basketball section.