Proposal 122: Number of permitted fouls [ Revision 2 ]

Committee: 15. Basketball
Submitted on 2025-07-20
Status: Passed on August 13, 2025

Background

In actual tournaments (Unicon or not), time constraints usually prevent the organizers to respect the "4x10 minutes with clockstops" game format, but the number of permitted fouls (per period for a team and per game for a player) still need to be determined. As witnessed at Unicon 18 Basketball B, deviating from the average number of fouls defined in the FIBA rules may have a huge impact on the sport, and in particular its security.

Proposal

New text to be added at the end of Section 15B.5.1:

Should a game not be played in 4 periods of 10 minutes, the rules concerning the number of fouls shall be adapted as follows.

Number of personal fouls at which a player must leave the game:
 - Game lasting 10 to 20 minutes: 3 fouls
 - Game lasting 21 to 30 minutes: 4 fouls
 - Game lasting 31 to 40 minutes: 5 fouls

Number of team fouls after which a team is in the team foul penalty situation (meaning that subsequent fouls result in free throws if they are personal and non-offensive):
 - Game period lasting 5 to 6 minutes: 2 fouls
 - Game period lasting 7 to 8 minutes: 3 fouls
 - Game period lasting 9 to 10 minutes: 4 fouls
 - Game period lasting 11 to 12 minutes: 5 fouls
 - Game period lasting 13 to 15 minutes: 6 fouls

Tournament organizers are invited to set a maximum number of Technical, Unsportsmanlike and Disqualifying fouls that can be committed by a player before that player is excluded from the whole tournament.

Body

The motivations behind this actual proposal:

  • Keeping the same average number of free/inconsequential fouls per time unit as in on-foot basketball makes sense (and I would strongly disagree if more fouls per time unit would be allowed, because I think injuries caused by contacts are more probable in our sport than in on-foot basketball).
  • The proposed rule was already used at Unicon 20 (down to game period of 7 minutes and total game length of 20 minutes), and nobody complained about that aspect (as far as I know).
  • The proposed rule is is the rule we use in our French unicycle basketball league since its creation, and it would be convenient if the French rule is consistent with the IUF rules.
  • The proposed rule seem to be consistent for the game formats the Joshuas envision to be used in Basketball A at Unicon.
  • This level of details has already been used numerous times (except probably the game period of 5 or 6 minutes), including Unicon, CFM, and many important French tournaments. A typical use is when we want to maximize playtime: given that we have the gym for X hours and we have Y games to get played in that time interval, we decide to play the games in two periods of the optimal Z minutes, even if the largest Z that fits is an unusual duration like 11 minutes.
  • The last sentence is motivated by the fact that bad/irrespectful behavior should be avoided as much as possible. (I think the French league uses a maximum of 3 such fouls maximum per player in a tournament.)

References

Discussion

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Change Log:

Revision 2 changed by David Ilcinkas (31 Jul 14:33)

Adding of the clarification parenthesis about the team foul penalty situation: "(meaning that subsequent fouls result in free throws if they are personal and non-offensive)".

Revision 1 changed by David Ilcinkas (20 Jul 11:31)

Votes on this proposal:

7 out of 9 voting members have voted.

Agree: 7, Disagree: 0, Abstain: 0.

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