NBA Overtime Rules: Length, Fouls, Timeouts and Records
How overtime works in the NBA: five-minute periods until someone leads, two timeouts each, and personal fouls that carry over while team fouls reset.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished NBA Rules26 min read
- Length of each overtime
- 5 minutes
- Break before each overtime
- 2:30
- Timeouts per team, per overtime
- 2
- Most overtimes in one game
- 6 (1951)
Five minutes. That is the whole of an NBA overtime period, and it is the answer most people want: when a game is tied after 48 minutes, the teams take a 2:30 break, jump the ball at center court and play a five-minute period. If it is tied again when that clock reaches zero, they do it again. And again, with no limit, until one team is ahead at the buzzer. The NBA has no tie, no shootout and no sudden-death basket.
Inside those five minutes, the rules are mostly the ones that applied in the fourth quarter, with a handful of resets. Each team gets two timeouts per overtime and keeps nothing from regulation. Personal fouls carry over, so a player with five is one whistle from the bench. Team fouls start again at zero, and the penalty arrives on the fourth team foul of the period instead of the fifth. The clock stops after made baskets in the last two minutes, the same as late in the fourth quarter. The rest of this guide goes through each of those pieces, then the playoffs, the record book and how the other American rulebooks handle a tie.
Five-minute periods with no limit and no tie in the NBA
The rule sits in the timing section of the NBA's Official Playing Rules. If the score is tied at the end of the fourth period, play resumes after 2:30, the teams keep the baskets they were shooting at, and every overtime period lasts five minutes. Nothing in the rule caps the number of periods. A game that is tied after the first overtime goes to a second, after the second to a third, and the rulebook simply keeps going.
That makes the NBA unusual among American leagues. The NFL ends a regular-season game as a tie if the 10-minute overtime period runs out level. The NHL settles regular-season games with a shootout after a three-on-three overtime. The only way out of an NBA overtime is a lead when the clock reads zero.
There is also no sudden death. A team that scores the first basket of overtime has not won anything. Every period is played to its full five minutes unless something extraordinary stops the game, and the result is decided by the score at the end of the period, exactly as in regulation.
How long overtime actually takes on the clock on the wall
Five minutes of game clock is rarely five minutes of anyone's evening. Add the 2:30 break, four timeouts between the two teams, the clock stopping after made baskets in the final two minutes, free throws, and any replay review, and a single overtime can easily run three or four times its five minutes in real time. A double overtime can add half an hour or more to a broadcast. Our guide to how long a full NBA game runs from tip to final buzzer breaks down where the regulation time goes.
| Element | Regulation quarter | Each overtime period |
|---|---|---|
| Game-clock length | 12 minutes | 5 minutes |
| Break before it | 2:30, or 3:30 on national TV; 15 minutes at halftime | 2:30 |
| How it starts | Opening tip for the first; set by that tip for the rest | Jump ball at center court |
| Team fouls before the penalty | 4 | 3 |
| Team timeouts | 7 for the whole of regulation | 2 for that period only |
| Shot clock | 24 seconds | 24 seconds |
The table describes the NBA only. College, the WNBA and international basketball each make different choices on fouls and timeouts, although nearly all of them agree on the five minutes.
A 2:30 break, a jump ball and the same baskets
When the fourth-quarter horn sounds on a tie, the officials take the ball, the coaches take their teams to the bench, and a 2:30 interval begins. The same interval applies before every subsequent overtime. Television can lengthen the breaks between quarters on national games, but the rulebook fixes the pause before overtime at 2:30 in both local and national broadcasts.
Then comes a jump ball at the center circle. This is the detail that catches out casual viewers, because after the opening tip of the game, possession at the start of the second, third and fourth quarters is decided by who won that tip. Overtime ignores all of that. Each overtime period starts fresh, with two players at center court and an official tossing the ball, and the winner of the tip gets the first possession of that period only. A team that loses the opening tip of the game and the first overtime tip can win the second-overtime tip and start that period with the ball. The mechanics of who may jump, where the other eight players must stand and what counts as a violation on the toss are the same as at the start of the game, and they are set out in our guide to NBA jump ball rules and violations.
The baskets do not change. A team that finished regulation attacking the basket in front of its own bench in the second half keeps attacking it through every overtime. That matters more than it sounds. In the final two minutes of a period, a team that takes a timeout after a defensive rebound can advance the ball into its frontcourt, and the bench a coach is shouting from sits next to the half of the floor where his offense is running.
- Horn on a tieThe fourth quarter or the previous overtime ends with the score level. No free throws or reviews remain to be resolved.
- 2:30 intervalTeams return to their benches. The interval length is fixed by the rulebook for every overtime, local or national broadcast.
- Timeouts resetAny timeouts left over from regulation or an earlier overtime are gone. Each team now holds two for this period.
- Team fouls resetEach team's team-foul count returns to zero. Personal fouls on individual players stay exactly where they were.
- Center jumpOne player from each team jumps at the center circle. The winner of the tip gets first possession of this period only.
- Five minutes playedThe period runs its full length. If one team leads when the clock hits zero, the game is over. If not, the cycle repeats.
The sequence under the NBA's timing and jump-ball rules. The same steps repeat before every additional overtime, with no change of baskets at any point.
Personal fouls carry over and team fouls start again at zero
A player's personal fouls belong to him for the whole game. Whatever he picked up in the first 48 minutes he carries into overtime, and the sixth personal foul still disqualifies him. There is no fresh allowance. A star who reaches overtime with five fouls is playing with his hands behind his back on defense, because one reach-in ends his night.
Team fouls work the other way. The NBA counts team fouls by period, and an overtime is its own period. When it starts, both teams are back to zero. What changes is the threshold. In a 12-minute quarter, a team may commit four team fouls without penalty, and the fifth puts the opponent in the bonus, shooting two free throws on every common foul. In a five-minute overtime, the allowance drops to three. The fourth team foul of an overtime period triggers the penalty.
The last-two-minutes rule still applies on top of that. If a team has not used its full allowance when the period reaches the two-minute mark, it may commit one more team foul without penalty in the final two minutes, and the next one puts the opponent in the bonus. In a regulation quarter that clause matters most to a team with one or two fouls at the two-minute mark. In overtime it comes up constantly, because the period is short and a team with one foul at the 2:00 mark is common.
How the arithmetic plays out late in overtime
Picture a team leading by three with 30 seconds left in overtime and the opponent bringing the ball up. Coaches often want to foul before the opponent can attempt a tying three-pointer, sending the shooter to the line for two shots instead. That only works if the foul is a common foul and not a shooting foul, and its effect depends entirely on the team-foul count. A team with a foul to give can commit it, stop the clock without free throws and force another inbound. A team already in the penalty gives up two shots. The reset at the start of overtime is what makes that foul to give so common in extra periods.
Offensive fouls do not count as team fouls in the NBA, with the exception of flagrant and punching fouls, so a charge in overtime costs the player a personal foul but does nothing to his team's count. Shooting fouls count as team fouls but already carry free throws, so they push a team toward the bonus without changing what that particular whistle costs. The full mechanics of who shoots and how many are in our guide to NBA free throw rules, and the broader family of fouls is laid out in the site's explainer on how NBA foul rules work.
Two timeouts in each overtime, and nothing saved from regulation
Each team is allowed two timeouts in each overtime period. The count is not added to anything. A team that reaches the end of regulation with three timeouts unused loses all three, starts overtime with two, and if the game goes to a second overtime, starts that one with two again regardless of how many it used in the first.
The current allowance dates from the NBA's timeout overhaul for the 2017-18 season, which cut each team to seven per game and removed the old mix of full and 20-second timeouts. Two in five minutes is still generous by the standard of regulation: seven timeouts spread across 48 minutes works out at fewer than one per five minutes of game clock. In overtime, a coach can stop the game twice in 300 seconds.
The regulation restrictions on late timeouts do not carry into overtime as such. In the fourth quarter, a team may use no more than four timeouts, and no more than two after the later of the three-minute mark or the second mandatory timeout. Overtime does not need those limits, because the allowance is only two to begin with. A timeout requested as time expires in an overtime is not granted, the same as at the end of any other period. For every other wrinkle, including who may call one and what happens if a team calls one it does not have, see our guide to NBA timeout rules.
The advance in the final two minutes
In the last two minutes of the fourth quarter and of any overtime, a team that gains possession in its backcourt and then takes a timeout may choose to inbound the ball from its frontcourt instead. That option is the single most valuable thing a timeout buys at the end of a close game, and it is the reason teams fight to preserve one for the final possession.
The arithmetic is simple. Without the advance, a team needing a basket with four seconds left must inbound from under its own basket and cover 94 feet. With it, the ball is thrown in near midcourt and the four seconds can buy a set play. In overtime, where both teams start with only two timeouts, a coach who uses both early to stop a run can find himself with no way to advance the ball when the period comes down to one possession.
Endgame rules that switch back on for the last two minutes
Several NBA rules apply only in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter and the last two minutes of any overtime. An overtime period therefore has two distinct phases: three minutes that play like ordinary basketball and two that play like the end of a close game. The fourth-quarter crunch is not a one-time thing. It happens again in every overtime.
The first of these is the clock. Through most of a game, the clock keeps running after a made field goal while the opponent takes the ball out. In the final two minutes of regulation and the final two minutes of every overtime, the game clock stops after a successful field goal and restarts when the inbound pass is touched on the court. That single change is why a five-minute overtime feels so much longer in its closing stretch.
The second is replay. NBA officials may trigger instant replay review on a wider set of plays in the last two minutes of the fourth period or of any overtime period. These include shot-clock questions, goaltending and basket interference, and whether a secondary defender drawing a charge was inside the restricted area. Outside those two minutes, many of the same questions can only be reviewed if a coach challenges them. In the last two minutes, a coach cannot challenge a goaltending or basket-interference call at all, because those plays are reviewed by the officials themselves.
The third is the away-from-the-play foul, a defensive foul committed deliberately away from the immediate offensive action in the final two minutes, typically grabbing a poor free-throw shooter who does not have the ball. The NBA's penalty is one free throw, which any player in the game may shoot, plus possession for the team that was fouled. In overtime, where intentional fouling to stop the clock is common, the rule decides how a trailing team is allowed to foul: the foul has to come in the area of the ball, not on a weak shooter grabbed on the far side of the court.
- Clock stops on made basketsAfter a successful field goal, the game clock stops and restarts when the inbound is touched on the floor.
- Advance after a timeoutA team that gains possession in its backcourt and takes a timeout may inbound from its frontcourt.
- Officials trigger reviewsShot-clock, goaltending and restricted-area questions can be reviewed without a coach's challenge.
- Away-from-the-play foulA deliberate defensive foul away from the ball brings one free throw plus possession.
- One foul to giveA team under its three-foul allowance may commit one team foul without penalty before reaching the bonus.
Rules that apply in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and of every overtime period under the NBA playing rules. They switch off for the first three minutes of each overtime and back on at 2:00.
Why the two-minute split matters for strategy
Coaches play the first three minutes of overtime close to how they play the middle of a quarter: running offense, using the shot clock, trying to get a lead before the endgame rules kick in. Leading by four or more at the two-minute mark of overtime changes the opponent's calculation, because the trailing team must now choose between quick shots and intentional fouls, and every made basket by the leader stops the clock anyway. The replay center's role in reviewing these late moments is explained in the site's guide to NBA replay review rules.
The 24-second clock, substitutions and a coach's challenge do not change
Not much else changes. The 24-second shot clock runs exactly as it did in regulation, with the reset to 14 seconds after an offensive rebound off the rim. A team cannot hold the ball for five minutes, and that one feature is why NBA overtimes produce scores and why the pre-1954 overtimes described further down produced so few.
Substitutions are unchanged. A coach may bring players in on any dead ball where substitution is permitted, exactly as in regulation. The only difference is practical: the bench is likely to be thinner, because players have fouled out or been ejected, and fatigue makes rotation choices harder.
A coach's challenge left over from regulation can still be used
The coach's challenge is a per-game allowance, not a per-period one. Each team has one challenge per game, and if the first is successful the team is awarded a second. A challenge that was not used during regulation therefore carries into overtime, which is the opposite of how timeouts work. A coach who has kept his challenge through 48 minutes can use it on a called foul in the final seconds of overtime.
The same conditions apply as in regulation. A challenge must be made with a timeout, so a team that has spent both of its overtime timeouts cannot challenge, and attempting to do so without a timeout costs a technical foul for an excessive timeout. If the first challenge is successful, the team keeps its timeout. A challenge is limited to a called personal foul against the challenging team, an out-of-bounds call that went against it, or a goaltending or basket-interference call, and the last of those cannot be challenged in the final two minutes of the fourth period or overtime.
Playoff overtime is the same five minutes
The NBA playoffs use exactly the same overtime as the regular season. Five-minute periods, the 2:30 break, the jump ball, two timeouts a team, team fouls resetting, unlimited periods until someone leads. A Game 7 of the NBA Finals that goes to overtime is played under the same timing rule as a Tuesday night game in November.
That surprises people who follow other American leagues, because the NFL and the NHL both treat playoff overtime differently from the regular season.
In the NFL, regular-season overtime is a single 10-minute period that can end in a tie. Playoff overtime cannot end in a tie: it is played in 15-minute periods until somebody wins. The guaranteed possession for both teams, even if the first team scores a touchdown, began as a playoff-only rule in 2022 and was extended to the regular season in 2025; after both teams have had the ball, it becomes sudden death. In the NHL, regular-season games tied after 60 minutes go to a five-minute, three-on-three sudden-death overtime and then a shootout. Playoff hockey abandons all of it: teams play full 20-minute periods of five-on-five, sudden death, as many as it takes, which is how the NHL produces games that run past midnight.
| League | Regular-season overtime | Playoff overtime | Can a game end tied? |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBA | Unlimited 5-minute periods | Unlimited 5-minute periods | No |
| NFL | One 10-minute period, both teams get a possession (since 2025) | 15-minute periods, both teams get a possession, then sudden death | Regular season only |
| NHL | 5 minutes of 3-on-3 sudden death, then a shootout | 20-minute periods of 5-on-5 sudden death | No |
| MLB | Extra innings with a runner placed on second base | Extra innings without the placed runner | No |
The NBA's consistency is a choice that follows from the sport. A basketball game already produces enough possessions in five minutes to decide a winner with reasonable fairness, so there is no need for a special postseason format to protect the result from a lottery. The NFL and NHL formats exist because a single score in those sports can decide a game, and the leagues have had to choose between speed and fairness. Basketball has never had to make that choice.
Double and triple overtime: foul trouble, tired legs and the five-player rule
Every overtime period adds five minutes of game clock to players who were already playing heavy minutes in a close game. The starters in a triple-overtime game routinely log 50 minutes or more, and the playing rules do nothing to account for fatigue. The rules affect long games in two other ways.
Foul trouble compounds
Because personal fouls carry over and the limit stays at six, every extra period gives the best players more chances to reach it. A team in a third overtime may be without two or three of its regulation regulars, and coaches who could protect a player with five fouls in regulation by sitting him now have nobody else to play. Team fouls reset each period, which helps a little, but the personal count is relentless. In long games the margin between six fouls and five is often the margin between winning and losing.
The rule that keeps five players on the floor
The NBA does not let a team play with fewer than five. If a player commits his sixth personal foul and his team has no eligible substitutes left, he stays in the game. He is charged with the personal foul and a team foul, and his team is assessed a technical foul. Every further personal foul he commits is treated the same way, with another technical against the team.
The rule also covers the case where a team is already down to five eligible players and one of them has to leave for injury or ejection. Then the player most recently disqualified on fouls returns to the game, and his team is charged a technical foul for the re-entry. The rulebook's principle is stated plainly: no team may be reduced to fewer than five players.
The situation is rare, because NBA teams dress more than enough players. It is not unheard of in very long games, or in games played when a team is short through injuries, illness or suspensions, and it sits squarely in the territory of double and triple overtimes. A technical foul gives the opponent one free throw, so a team that keeps a disqualified player on the floor is paying a point every time he fouls. Coaches in that spot ask that player to defend without his hands.
The six-overtime game of 1951 and the longest NBA games since
The longest game in NBA history was played on January 6, 1951. The Indianapolis Olympians beat the Rochester Royals 75-73 in six overtimes. It remains the record.
The score explains why the game went so long. There was no shot clock. A team that took the lead in an overtime could hold the ball and wait for the last shot, and the trailing team, unwilling to foul or unable to get the ball, often let it. Several of those six overtimes ended with one shot or none. Games like this one, and the even lower-scoring Fort Wayne Pistons win over the Minneapolis Lakers by 19-18 in November 1950, are why the NBA introduced the 24-second clock for the 1954-55 season. The overtime rule did not need to change. The clock that governs possessions did.
The playoff record is four overtimes. On March 21, 1953, the Boston Celtics beat the Syracuse Nationals 111-105 in four overtimes in the Eastern Division semifinals, and Bob Cousy scored 50 points, a playoff total that was remarkable for the era and was built in part on a huge number of free throws. No NBA playoff game since has needed four extra periods, through the 2025 postseason.
The NBA Finals record is three. Game 5 of the 1976 Finals, played on June 4 at Boston Garden, went to triple overtime before the Celtics beat the Phoenix Suns 128-126. It is the only Finals game to go three overtimes, and it contains one of the strangest endings in the sport's history. At the end of the second overtime, with Phoenix trailing and the ball in the backcourt with a second or so to play, Suns guard Paul Westphal called a timeout his team did not have. That cost a technical foul. Boston made the free throw to lead by two, but the Suns, having been granted the timeout, inbounded at midcourt, and Gar Heard hit a turnaround jumper at the buzzer to force a third overtime. Boston still won the game and then the series in six.
- 6Most overtimes, any game (1951)
- 4Most overtimes, playoff game (1953)
- 3Most overtimes, NBA Finals game (1976)
Records from the NBA's own record book through the 2025 season. They can be equaled or broken in any game, so treat each as a mark that stood at that date rather than a permanent one.
Since the shot clock arrived, the longest games have been five overtimes. The most famous of the modern era is the Milwaukee Bucks' 155-154 win over the Seattle SuperSonics in November 1989, a game that shows what a shot clock does: the six-overtime game of 1951 produced 148 points across 78 minutes, and the 1989 game produced more than double that.
Triple-overtime playoff games are rare but not freakish. The 2009 first-round series between the Chicago Bulls and the Boston Celtics included one, a 128-127 Bulls win in Game 6, in a series that featured several overtime games. Boston won Game 7.
| Game | Date | Overtimes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indianapolis at Rochester, regular season | January 6, 1951 | 6 | Olympians 75, Royals 73 |
| Celtics vs. Nationals, Eastern Division semifinals | March 21, 1953 | 4 | Celtics 111, Nationals 105 |
| Phoenix at Boston, NBA Finals Game 5 | June 4, 1976 | 3 | Celtics 128, Suns 126 |
| Boston at Chicago, first round Game 6 | April 30, 2009 | 3 | Bulls 128, Celtics 127 |
How overtime counts in the box score and the record book
The NBA does not keep overtime statistics in a separate ledger. Points, rebounds, assists, minutes and fouls scored in overtime go into the game's box score alongside everything from regulation, and from there into season and career totals.
That has small but real consequences for per-game numbers. A player's minutes-per-game average quietly includes his overtime minutes, which is how Wilt Chamberlain averaged 48.5 minutes per game for the Philadelphia Warriors in 1961-62, more than the 48 minutes of a regulation game. He played nearly every minute of every game, and the overtimes pushed his average above the theoretical maximum. Points per game, rebounds per game and the rest also absorb overtime production, so a player whose team played several extra periods in a season has, in effect, played a few more minutes than his games-played total suggests.
Advanced statistics handle this better. Per-36-minute and per-100-possession figures, and anything built from them, adjust for playing time rather than games. A player's raw 30 points in a double-overtime game look more ordinary once divided across 54 minutes. The site's explainers on player efficiency rating and similar measures show why analysts prefer rate stats for this kind of comparison.
Wins, losses and nothing else
The standings treat an overtime win as a win and an overtime loss as a loss. There is no overtime-loss column of the kind the NHL keeps, and no point awarded for reaching overtime. Team records, tiebreakers, playoff seeding and the draft lottery standings all use the plain win-loss record, so for every purpose that matters in the NBA, an overtime defeat counts exactly the same as a 30-point defeat.
Target scores and sudden death: the NBA's own overtime experiments
The NBA's official games have used the same overtime for decades. Its other competitions have not. The league has used the All-Star Game, Summer League and the G League as places to try different ways of ending a game, and some of those experiments are as interesting as the rule itself.
The best known is the target-score finish, usually called the Elam Ending after Nick Elam, the Ball State professor who proposed it. Under it, the game clock is switched off at a set point, a target score is calculated by adding a fixed number to the leading team's total, and the first team to reach that score wins. Every game ends on a made basket or free throw, and there is no incentive for the trailing team to foul just to stop a clock that is no longer running. The Basketball Tournament, a summer event for professional players, began using it in 2017.
The NBA used the Elam Ending in the All-Star Game from 2020, adding 24 points to the leading score after three quarters in honor of Kobe Bryant, who had died weeks before the 2020 game. That format ran through 2023. The league dropped the target score for the 2024 game, went to a mini-tournament of short games played to a fixed score in 2025, and in 2026 brought the idea back only as a tiebreaker, a race to a small number of points in place of a timed overtime. A game decided by a target score cannot end tied, so it never needs a five-minute period. The site's guide to the NBA All-Star Game format covers the different versions.
The G League, the NBA's development league, went further. From the 2022-23 season its regular-season overtime has had no clock: a target is set by adding seven points to the tied score, and the first team to reach it wins. Summer League, the July showcase for rookies and young players, has used a shortened overtime followed by sudden death, where the first team to score after the first overtime period wins.
Why the official game has not followed
The NBA has shown no sign of bringing either change into regular-season or playoff games. Target scores would change the finish of every game, tied or not, and the end of a close NBA game is the most-watched part of the product. Sudden death in basketball makes the jump ball at the start of overtime close to decisive, which is the kind of lottery the five-minute period was designed to avoid.
Overtime in college, the WNBA, FIBA and high school
Basketball rulebooks in the United States agree on very little, but they come close to agreement on overtime. Almost everybody plays five minutes, almost everybody plays as many periods as needed, and almost nobody allows a tie. The differences are in the details: the length of the game around it, the foul limits and how team fouls are counted.
College basketball, under the NCAA, plays five-minute overtimes for both men and women. Players foul out on their fifth personal foul rather than the sixth, which makes foul trouble in overtime even more punishing. Team fouls carry into overtime rather than resetting. In the men's game, which plays halves, overtime is treated as an extension of the second half for team-foul purposes, so a team in the bonus at the end of regulation stays in it. Women's college basketball, which switched to quarters in 2015-16, treats overtime as an extension of the fourth quarter for team fouls. College teams also carry unused timeouts into overtime, unlike the NBA. Our guide to college basketball and NBA rule differences goes through the other gaps between the two books.
The WNBA plays five-minute overtimes too, on a 40-minute regulation game of four 10-minute quarters, and keeps the NBA's six-foul disqualification. Much of the WNBA rulebook follows the NBA's, but the league sets its own penalty thresholds and timeout allowances, so where the details matter, our comparison of the WNBA and NBA rulebooks is the place to check.
FIBA, the international federation whose rules govern the Olympics and the World Cup, also plays five-minute extra periods with a two-minute break before each one. Players foul out on five fouls. Team fouls in extra periods count as if they happened in the fourth quarter, so a team that reached the penalty late in regulation stays there. Each team gets one timeout per extra period. The site's explainer on FIBA rules compared with the NBA covers the international game in full.
High school basketball under the National Federation of State High School Associations is the exception on length. NFHS games are 32 minutes, four eight-minute quarters, and overtime periods are four minutes. Players foul out on five fouls. Team fouls carry into overtime as part of the fourth quarter. The federation sets the national rule, but state associations adopt it and occasionally add their own provisions, such as running clocks in lopsided games.
| Rulebook | Overtime length | Personal fouls to disqualify | Team fouls in overtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBA | 5 minutes | 6 | Reset each overtime; penalty on the 4th |
| WNBA | 5 minutes | 6 | Set by the WNBA's own penalty rules |
| NCAA men | 5 minutes | 5 | Carry over from the second half |
| NCAA women | 5 minutes | 5 | Carry over from the fourth quarter |
| FIBA | 5 minutes | 5 | Carry over from the fourth quarter |
| NFHS high school | 4 minutes | 5 | Carry over from the fourth quarter |
The NBA is the odd one out on team fouls. Every other major rulebook treats overtime as a continuation of the end of regulation for foul purposes, so a team that fouled heavily in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter enters overtime already in the penalty. The NBA wipes that slate. The professional rule is friendlier to a team that had to foul to get to overtime, which is exactly the team that most often gets there. For more on how basketball is organized across levels in the United States, the site's basketball hub collects the explainers in one place.