NBA Continuation Rule: When a Foul Becomes an And-One

Game 3 of the 1999 Eastern Conference finals, Madison Square Garden, the Knicks trailing Indiana 91-88 with 11.9 seconds left. Larry Johnson grabbed a deflected inbounds pass behind the arc, head-faked Antonio Davis into the air, took a dribble-step left and was fouled as he launched a 26-footer that went in. The free throw made it 92-91 with 5.7 seconds showing, and Indiana did not score again. The argument about whether Davis made contact before Johnson started his shot has never quite stopped, and that argument is the whole of the NBA's continuation rule in one play.

Here is the rule. A player who is fouled after his shooting motion has begun is a shooter. If the ball goes in, the basket counts and he shoots one free throw, the and-one. If it misses, he shoots two free throws, or three if the attempt was from behind the three-point line. On a drive the NBA says the shooting motion begins at the gather, the moment he takes control of the ball to finish, and it carries him through the two steps that follow. On a jump shot it begins with the upward motion. Fouled before either point, he is not a shooter, and nothing he scores afterward counts.

Continuation in the NBA: the basket, the free throw and the missed-shot alternative

The word "continuation" never had to be invented by the league. It describes something announcers saw for decades before the rulebook caught up: a player hit on the way up who keeps going, finishes the move and gets the basket. What the rulebook does is attach consequences to one judgment, which is whether the foul happened during the act of shooting.

Under Rule 12B of the NBA rulebook, the personal-foul rule, read against the definition of a field goal attempt in Rule 4, a shooting foul produces one of three outcomes. The only variable that matters after the whistle is whether the ball went in.

Situation at the moment of contact	Basket counts?	Free throws awarded
Fouled in the act of shooting, two-point try is good	Yes	1
Fouled in the act of shooting, three-point try is good	Yes	1
Fouled in the act of shooting, two-point try misses	No	2
Fouled in the act of shooting, three-point try misses	No	3
Fouled before the shooting motion, defense not in the penalty	No	0, sideline throw-in
Fouled before the shooting motion, defense in the penalty	No	2

The last two rows are where the arguments live. A player fouled one dribble before his gather, who then rises and banks the ball in, gets nothing from the basket. The officials wave it off. If his opponents have not yet reached their team-foul limit for the quarter, his reward for being fouled is the ball out of bounds on the side.

• 2free throwsMissed two-point try
• 3free throwsMissed three-point try
• 1free throwsMade try of either kind
• 2free throwsNon-shooting foul in the penalty

Free throws awarded for a single personal foul on a shooter under NBA Rule 12B, before any technical or flagrant foul is added. A non-shooting foul awards free throws only when the defense is in the penalty.

Two things follow from that table. The first is that a made basket plus a free throw is almost always worth more than two free throws, which is why shooters finish through contact rather than stopping when they feel it. The second is that a defender who fouls a player and then watches the ball drop through has given away more than he would by letting the shot go uncontested. Fouling a shooter makes sense only when it prevents the shot from being a good one.

The free throws themselves follow the ordinary procedure, with players lined up in the marked spaces and the shooter given ten seconds; the details of the lane are in our guide to how NBA free throws are lined up and shot. For continuation the interesting question is never what happens at the line. It is what happened half a second before the whistle.

Why the word "continuation" outlived its precise meaning

Strictly, continuation is a description of the period between the start of the shooting motion and the release. In casual use it has become a name for the whole rule. When a broadcaster says "no continuation," he means the officials ruled the contact came before the motion started. When he says "and he gets the continuation," he means the basket counted. Neither phrase appears as a heading in the NBA book, which deals in the gather, the act of shooting and the shooting foul.

Where the act of shooting begins on a jump shot and on a drive

Rule 4, Section XI says the act of shooting starts when the player has started his shooting motion and continues until that motion ceases and he returns to a normal floor position. The rulebook then gives two different starting points, because there are two different kinds of shot.

A jump shot taken from a standstill or after a dribble ends with the player planted has an easy beginning. The ball starts to rise toward the shooting pocket, the knees bend, the player begins moving up. Officials call that the upward motion, and once it starts, a foul is a shooting foul. A defender who reaches in and slaps the wrist while the ball is still at the shooter's hip, before anything has started to rise, has committed a non-shooting foul. It is a fine line. On a quick catch-and-shoot it is a matter of a tenth of a second.

A drive is harder. A player going to the rim is moving forward at full speed, and he does not have an upward motion in the jump-shot sense until his last step. If the NBA waited for that moment, a defender could hammer a driver on his penultimate step and give up only a sideline throw-in. So the league ties the shot on a drive to the gather instead.

What the gather actually is

The NBA defines the gather in Rule 4, Section III, under that heading. For a player who has been dribbling, it is the point at which he puts two hands on the ball, lets it come to rest, puts a hand under it and brings it to a pause, or otherwise takes enough control to hold it, pass it or shoot it. For a player catching a pass or picking up a loose ball, it is the point at which he gains that same control.

On a layup that means the instant the dribble ends and the ball is in his hands for the finish. Everything after that instant, up to the release, belongs to the shot. The two steps he is allowed after the gather are part of it.

Type of attempt	Where the NBA starts the act of shooting	Where it ends
Standstill jump shot	Upward motion of the ball and body	Release and return to a normal floor position
Pull-up jumper off the dribble	The gather, which usually coincides with the plant	Release and landing
Layup or dunk on a drive	The gather, two steps before the finish	Release and landing
Catch-and-shoot three	Upward motion after the catch	Release and landing
Tip-in or putback	Contact with the ball on the tap	The tap

The end point is as important as the start. A shooter who is undercut on his landing, after the ball has left his hand, is still in the act of shooting for foul purposes. The NBA has long protected the landing space of a jump shooter, and a defender who slides under him is charged with a shooting foul even though the ball is already at the rim. That is the logic behind the free throws a shooter receives when he is clipped coming down from a three.

The definitions are tidy on paper. On the floor, an official has a fraction of a second to decide whether the hand came under the ball before or after the arm swiped across it.

Fouled before the gather: no basket, however fast the release

This is the part of the rule casual viewers find hardest to accept, because it produces outcomes that look unfair from the stands. A guard drives, a defender grabs his arm, the guard gathers almost instantly and lays the ball in. The official signals the foul with the gesture for a non-shooting foul and waves off the basket. The guard was fouled. His shot went in. He gets neither.

The logic is that a foul makes the ball dead. Under NBA rules, the whistle for a personal foul ends live play unless the fouled player is already in the act of shooting, in which case the try is allowed to finish. A player fouled before the gather was not shooting, so the ball was dead at the moment of contact and nothing that followed can score.

What he gets instead

That depends on the defense's team fouls, which is the one place the continuation rule touches the clock and the scorebook.

In the NBA, a team enters the penalty on its fifth team foul of a quarter. After that, every common foul sends the fouled player to the line for two shots. Before it, a common foul produces only a throw-in from the sideline nearest the spot. So a guard fouled before his gather early in the second quarter gets the ball back at the side and the shot clock goes to 14 if it was lower. The same foul with four minutes left in the third and the defense on six fouls gives him two free throws. In the last two minutes of a quarter there is a separate provision that puts a team in the penalty on its second foul in that window if it had not already reached the limit.

Foul situation	What the fouled team gets
Before the gather, defense under the team-foul limit	Sideline throw-in, shot clock to 14 if it was lower
Before the gather, defense in the penalty	Two free throws
After the gather, basket good	Basket plus one free throw
After the gather, basket missed	Two or three free throws

College is built differently. Men's college basketball still uses the one-and-one at seven team fouls and two shots at ten in each half, and the women's college game, which plays quarters, goes straight to two shots on the fifth foul of a quarter. Our page on how the college bonus is counted sets out the thresholds. The principle that a foul before the shot wipes out the basket is the same in every American code.

The awkward truth is that from the seats, a gather and a reach-in that are 0.2 seconds apart look simultaneous. Officials who call it right are often booed for it.

The contact decides it, not the whistle

A whistle is a reaction. An official sees the contact, recognizes it as a foul and blows, and the sound comes some fraction of a second after the act. By the time it reaches the players, a shooter may have finished the move. Nothing in the rulebook makes the whistle the moment that counts. The moment that counts is the contact.

This produces two kinds of play that look contradictory.

In the first, the whistle comes late but the contact came early. A driver is hit on the hip a full dribble before he gathers, the official blows a beat later, and the ball is in the air by the time the sound arrives. The basket does not count, because the foul came before the shooting motion, however long the official took to signal it.

In the second, the whistle comes early but the contact came during the shot. A player gathers, takes a hit to the arm on his first step, and hears the whistle before he has released. He keeps going and scores. That basket counts, because he was in the act of shooting when the contact happened, and the try is allowed to finish.

1. 1Locate the contactThe official fixes the instant the illegal contact happened, regardless of when the whistle sounded.
2. 2Ask whether the shot had begunOn a drive, had the player gathered? On a jump shot, had the upward motion started?
3. 3Ask whether the motion stayed continuousAfter the gather, did the player go straight into the shot, or did he reset, re-dribble or stop?
4. 4Check for a non-basketball moveDid the shooter launch into the defender, kick a leg out at an abnormal angle, or veer off his path to create the contact?
5. 5Watch the ballIf the try goes in, the basket counts and one free throw follows. If it misses, two or three shots.
6. 6Report the foulThe calling official signals a shooting foul with the number of free throws, or a non-shooting foul.

A simplified order of the judgments behind every shooting-foul call under NBA rules. Officials make them in real time; replay can review only the narrower questions listed in the league's challenge and review rules.

Signals you can read from the seats

When an official signals a shooting foul, he raises the number of fingers for the free throws, or signals the basket and one. On a foul that was before the gather, he typically waves his arms across his body to cancel the basket before reporting the foul. A crowd that knows these gestures knows the ruling before the scorer's table announces it.

Where replay fits

Replay does very little with continuation. Under Rule 14 a coach may challenge a called personal foul charged to his own team, a called out-of-bounds violation, or a called goaltending or basket interference, and a successful challenge can get the foul rescinded or reassigned to the right player. A team gets one challenge, and a second if the first succeeds. Whether the contact came before or after the gather is a judgment inside that personal foul, and it is rarely overturned, because the tape usually shows contact close enough to either side to leave the call standing. One narrower question gets reviewed without a coach asking for it: the league's Replay Center can trigger a review of whether a shooting foul should have been two free throws or three, which is a question about where the shooter's feet were, not about when his shot began. The broader framework is in our explainer on the NBA's replay review and challenge rules.

What continuous has to mean after the gather

The rulebook's protection is for a shot. Once a player has gathered, he is allowed his two steps and his release, and contact during that sequence is a shooting foul. What he is not allowed to do is gather, absorb contact and then start something new.

Three common breaks end the continuation.

The first is a new dribble. A player who gathers and then puts the ball back on the floor has committed a double dribble if he has ended his dribble, and that is its own violation. But a player who was in the middle of gathering and loses the ball back to the floor, then recovers and shoots, has not continued anything. The officials are entitled to treat the foul as happening before a shot existed.

The second is a pump fake that turns into a reset. A shooter who goes up, is hit, comes down still holding the ball and then shoots again is in a grey area. If the contact came during the first upward motion, that was a shooting foul and the second attempt is irrelevant to the call. If the contact came after he landed and squared up, a new shot began and the foul belongs to it.

The third is a stop. A driver who gathers, comes to a two-foot jump stop, looks around, and then goes up has paused. Contact during the pause is a foul on a player holding the ball who is not shooting.

The NBA's two steps after the gather are what matter for continuation, because they define how long a drive can last and still be a shot. A player who uses both and then releases is a shooter from gather to landing. A player who takes a third has traveled, and there is no shooting foul to award on a play that ended in a violation before the contact. The footwork side of this, including why a legal finish can show three foot contacts, is covered in depth in our explainer on the traveling rule and the gather step.

When the defender's contact causes the break

One wrinkle runs the other way. A driver who gathers, is hit hard on his first step and stumbles has been knocked out of a continuous motion by the foul itself. Officials do not penalize him for the stumble. If he regains himself and gets a shot away in the same action, the basket can count, because the interruption was the defender's doing. If the contact knocks the ball loose or puts him on the floor, he is a shooter who was fouled and missed, and he goes to the line for two or three. The test is whether the shooter chose to stop, not whether he was stopped.

The Eurostep is continuous

A two-step finish that goes left and then right is still two steps after the gather. Contact on either step is a shooting foul, and the ball counts if it falls. The move looks like an interruption to a viewer counting feet. To the rulebook it is one continuous action.

The and-one, the four-point play and how much one trip can be worth

An and-one is the basket plus the free throw. On a two-point shot the result is a three-point play, a phrase that was in newspaper box scores long before anyone said "and-one" on television. On a made three the result is a four-point play, which the NBA has been able to produce since it adopted the three-point line for the 1979-80 season.

Four-point plays are uncommon because the defender has to foul a shooter who is behind the arc and the shooter has to make the shot anyway. Johnson's in 1999 is the one most fans can name, because it decided a playoff game.

How much more can one possession be worth? The rulebook gives several ways to stack points.

The shooter's free throw is the base. A technical foul called on the same play, against a defender who argues the call or a coach who walks onto the floor, adds one more free throw for the offense, which any player on the floor may take. A flagrant foul is different: it carries two free throws and possession, so a made shot with a flagrant foul on the shooter is the basket, two shots, and the ball back. If the flagrant also draws a technical, there is a third free throw. Flagrant fouls come in two grades, and the higher one also ejects the player who committed it.

Made two, common foul3points

Made three, common foul4points

Made two, flagrant foul4points

Made three, flagrant foul5points

Made three, flagrant plus technical6points

Ceiling for a single possession, assuming every free throw is made, under NBA rules. A flagrant foul also returns possession to the fouled team, so the trip does not end there.

Show the numbers

Points available from one trip after a foul on a made shot

Item	Value
Made two, common foul	3points
Made three, common foul	4points
Made two, flagrant foul	4points
Made three, flagrant foul	5points
Made three, flagrant plus technical	6points

Those ceilings are rarely reached. A flagrant foul on a made three is unusual, and the defense has to compound it with a technical. The bar is a statement of what the rule allows, not a description of how often it happens.

The and-one as a scoring tool

Teams that score through contact have always been a step ahead in close games, because an and-one gives them a free throw on a dead ball with the clock stopped. Big men who finish around the rim lean on the three-point play more than jump-shooting guards do, since contact at the rim is more frequent. Guards hunting fouls from behind the arc were the reason the league had to step in twice in the last fifteen years.

The rip-through and the 2011 decision to stop paying for it

The rip-through was a guard's move with a long history and a short peak. A player holding the ball on the perimeter, with a defender's arm reaching in, swung the ball up and through that arm, making contact, and then raised the ball into a shot. Officials of the 2000s often called it a shooting foul, because the player was in the act of shooting by the time the whistle came. Three free throws, sometimes, from a defender who had done nothing more than reach.

Kevin Durant used it effectively. So did several high-volume scorers. The fans who watched it saw a player hunting a foul rather than a shot.

In December 2011, days before the lockout-shortened season opened on Christmas Day, Stu Jackson, then the league's head of basketball operations, told officials that the rip-through was a non-shooting foul unless the player had already begun his shooting motion before the contact. In other words, the swing of the ball into the defender's arm was not a shot, because the player had not started to rise. The contact still counted as a foul on the defender if he had reached in illegally. It was just a foul on a player holding the ball.

This mattered for the continuation rule in two ways. It confirmed the principle that the shooting motion has a start, and that contact before it is not protected no matter what the player does afterward. It also confirmed that officials could look past the result, the shot going up, to the sequence that produced it.

What remains legal

A player may still sweep the ball through his defender's reach to protect it, and a defender who grabs his arm on that sweep has still committed a foul. A player who has already begun his shot, ball rising, knees bent, and then feels the reach, is still a shooter. The 2011 interpretation removed only the trick of beginning a shot after creating the contact.

Non-basketball moves and the 2021 reset

Ten years after the rip-through, the NBA moved again. Before the 2021-22 season the league announced it would stop rewarding shooters who created contact with moves that were not part of a natural basketball action. The phrase it used was "non-basketball moves," and the list was specific.

The league named three actions. A shooter who launches or leans into a defender at an abnormal angle. A shooter who kicks a leg up or out to the side at an abnormal angle. A ball handler who abruptly veers off his path, sideways or backward, into a defender. Where the contact came from one of those, officials were told to call an offensive foul if it was more than marginal and nothing at all if it was marginal.

Move	How the NBA treats it since 2021-22
Launching or leaning into a defender at an abnormal angle	Offensive foul if more than marginal, otherwise no call
Leg kicked up or out to the side at an abnormal angle	Offensive foul if more than marginal, otherwise no call
Abruptly veering off the dribble path into a defender	Offensive foul if more than marginal, otherwise no call
Natural shot with a defender reaching into the arm	Shooting foul, as before

The change is usually associated with James Harden and Trae Young, the two players whose foul-drawing styles had been most discussed. The league framed it around the action, not the player, and applied it to everyone.

What it did to continuation

The 2021 interpretation did not move the start of the shooting motion. A shooter gathered or rose exactly where he always had. What changed was the test applied to the contact. Before 2021, the question was mostly whether the defender touched the shooter. After it, the question became who created the contact, and whether that action was a basketball play.

That pushed some plays that would have been and-ones into no-calls. A guard who leans into a defender on a three, gets hit and makes the shot has the basket, but no free throw. If his lean was the cause of the contact, it is the defender who might get the benefit.

The move also connects to the league's rule on flopping, which penalizes a player who exaggerates contact; the two are different problems, explained separately in our guide to the NBA's flopping penalty. The non-basketball move rule deals with contact the shooter really did cause. Flopping deals with contact that was not really there.

The verdict since the 2021-22 change is mixed. The rule cut down on the most theatrical foul-hunting, which was its purpose. It also handed officials a judgment about intent, and judgments about intent produce inconsistency.

Pass or shot: reading a player who has not yet chosen

Not every gather leads to a shot. A driver who gathers in the lane is allowed to finish, to pass, or to come to a stop, and he may not decide which until his second step. That creates a recurring problem for officials, because the continuation rule protects a shooter and nobody else.

The test in practice is the action the player was in when the contact came. If the ball was rising toward the rim, he was shooting. If his arms were extended toward a teammate, he was passing. If he was holding the ball with no clear direction, the safest reading is that he had not yet committed to a shot, which makes the foul a non-shooting one.

Drive-and-kick contact

The common case is the guard who drives, draws the help defender, and is hit as he passes to the corner. That is a foul on a passer. If the defense is under the limit, his team gets the ball out of bounds. Officials sometimes hold the whistle on light contact that did not affect the pass. That is not improvisation. The Comments on the Rules in the NBA book say outright that contact incidental to a normal offensive or defensive movement is not illegal, and that penalties exist to compensate a player who was actually placed at a disadvantage.

The post player who fakes, gets hit, and passes

A post player who shows the ball, takes contact on the way up and then dumps the ball off is a passer. The official judges what he did, not what he might have done. Defenders who have studied a player's tendencies use this: the player who looks to pass first draws fewer shooting fouls than the one who always goes up.

There is a defensive incentive here too. A help defender who arrives early, before the shooter has committed, gives up a non-shooting foul. One who arrives late gives up a shooting foul and perhaps an and-one. For more on how help-side contact is judged, including the line the defender must be on, see our guide to charges and blocking fouls in the NBA.

Late-game arithmetic around the continuation rule

With twenty seconds left and a three-point lead, a defending team faces a choice. It can play straight and risk a tying three, or it can foul before the shot and give up at most two free throws. Fouling makes the tie impossible on that possession, provided the foul happens before the shooting motion.

The NBA's continuation rule is the reason the decision is delicate. A defender sent to foul must do it before the gather on a drive, or before the upward motion on a jump shot. If the official judges that the shooter had started, the foul becomes three free throws, and if the shot goes in it becomes a potential four-point play, which loses the game.

Fouling early

Teams that foul in that situation tend to do it as soon as the ball handler crosses midcourt, with a grab or a wrap-up that is plainly not on a shooter. Doing it earlier also gives the trailing team less time to rebound a missed second free throw and score again.

Hunting contact behind the arc

The offense knows the same arithmetic. A trailing shooter who senses a foul coming will try to start his shot as the defender arrives, so that the contact lands on a shooting motion. Some go up the moment they see the defender's hands move. The 2021 interpretation on non-basketball moves narrowed that option, because a shooter who launches himself into a defender to manufacture the foul can now be denied.

1. 1Inbound or reboundThe trailing team gets the ball with time for one shot attempt.
2. 2Defense decides whether to foulThe leading team chooses to concede at most two free throws rather than allow a three.
3. 3Foul before the shooting motionContact on the dribble or the catch is a non-shooting foul; the defense is usually in the penalty, so two shots follow.
4. 4Shooter tries to start the shotA shooter who rises as the defender arrives can turn the contact into three free throws.
5. 5Official rules on timingIf the motion had started, three shots, and a made three becomes a four-point play.

An illustration of the sequence behind the foul-up-three choice under NBA rules, not a recommendation. The thresholds that make a foul a shooting foul come from the gather and upward-motion definitions.

The decision is genuinely close and coaches split on it. The rule does not make the choice. It decides the price.

NBA continuation rule vs college and high school

The professional game looks more generous than the college game to most fans who watch both, and the perception is roughly correct for drives. The reasons sit in different rule texts, written by different bodies at different times.

The NBA writes its own rulebook. College basketball has two, a men's book overseen by the NCAA Men's Basketball Rules Committee and a women's book overseen by its own committee, with both sets of changes signed off by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel. High school basketball is governed by the National Federation of State High School Associations. None of these defers to the others, and the NBA is still the only one that ties the start of a shot on a drive to a gather defined in the rulebook.

Code	Where the shot begins on a drive	Basket counts on a foul during the shot?	Free throws on a miss
NBA	At the gather, defined in Rule 4	Yes, plus one free throw	Two or three
NCAA men, from 2025-26	At the habitual throwing movement, with the step the driver is on allowed to finish	Yes, plus one free throw	Two or three
NCAA women	At the motion that habitually precedes the release	Yes, plus one free throw	Two or three
NFHS high school	At the habitual throwing movement, with a pivot or step completed if it was underway	Yes, plus one free throw	Two or three
FIBA	When the player begins the continuous movement before the release	Yes, plus one free throw	Two or three

The college and high school texts tie the start of a try to the habitual throwing movement, the motion a player makes just before the release, and protect a shooter fouled during what they call continuous motion. On a jump shot that lines up closely with the NBA's upward motion. On a drive it used to be the clearest gap in American basketball: college officials read the habitual motion as starting with the lift into the shot rather than two steps earlier at the gather, so a college driver hit on his first step after ending the dribble often got a non-shooting foul where an NBA driver on the same play got two shots.

That gap narrowed in June 2025. The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved a change to the men's continuous motion rule for the 2025-26 season: a player who ends his dribble going toward the basket and absorbs contact from the defense may now pivot or complete the step he is on and finish the field goal attempt. The committee's stated reason was that the old reading punished good offensive moves and left the men's game out of step with other levels. The NFHS text had long let a player fouled while pivoting or stepping complete that foot movement, which is the alignment the NCAA was reaching for.

Two things the change did not do. It did not import the NBA's gather, so the men's college rule still starts the try at the throwing movement and then permits the step already underway, rather than treating everything after a defined gather as part of the shot. And it did not touch the women's game: the women's committee spent its 2025-26 changes on a coach's challenge, a 20-second frontcourt shot clock reset and a jump-stop traveling allowance, and left the continuous motion text where it was.

What remains is partly rule text and partly officiating culture, and the two are hard to separate. Our broader comparison of where the college and pro rulebooks diverge covers the clock, the line and the fouls.

What does not differ

The payout is the same everywhere. A basket plus one, two shots for a missed two and three for a missed three are common to every American code and to FIBA. The structure of the rule is not in dispute. Its trigger point is.

How the gather came to be written into the rulebook, and what it settled

The word "gather" was in basketball's vocabulary long before it was in the NBA's rules. Coaches used it for the moment a player collects the ball off the dribble to finish. Officials used it informally to describe where the step count started on a drive. The NBA's travel rule, for decades, spoke instead of a player "progressing" with the ball and of the "completion of a dribble," and left the gather to judgment.

Late in the 2010s the league rewrote its traveling language and placed a formal definition of the gather in Rule 4. The definition separates a player receiving a pass from a player ending his own dribble, and for the dribbler it names the specific actions that end it: two hands on the ball, a hand under the ball bringing it to a pause, or control enough to hold, pass or shoot. The step count was then tied to that defined moment.

The settling effect

The rewrite was aimed at traveling, but it settled continuation too, because the NBA had already been using the gather to mark the start of a shot on a drive. Once the gather had a written definition, both rules were anchored to the same instant. A player's step count and his status as a shooter now begin together. The official who decides that a player has gathered has, in the same judgment, decided that contact from that point on is a shooting foul.

That alignment made the rule easier to teach and harder to argue about. It did not make close plays any less close. A gather is still an instant, the contact is still an instant, and when the two are a tenth of a second apart, only the official's eyes decide which came first.

The NBA has not had to touch the core of the continuation rule since. The 2011 rip-through ruling and the 2021 non-basketball moves interpretation were both refinements about how players create contact, not about when a shot begins. The fixed point is the gather.

For the full rules framework, from violations through fouls, our basketball section collects the rest of the NBA guides, and the summary of every type of foul in the NBA rulebook is the place to start for the fouls that sit around this one.