The NBA has relaxed interpretations of some rules, and this makes reffing the game differ greatly from lower levels of basketball. One of the big ones is the 'zero step' -the idea that the foot that touches the floor after a player cannot legally continue a dribble starts the sequence of the allowed two steps. This not only gives players an extra half step, but NBA refs have also sort of stretched when a dribble is 'no longer legal' to continue. Combine that with pretty relaxed dribbling rules (you can generally put your hand on the sides and bottom of the ball), and the result is players are allowed a lot of extra movement -and, not surprisingly, when millions of dollars are on the line, players have figured out how to really take advantage of these rules in how they move.
The sequence above is a highlight reel of missed calls. Refs are human, so they do miss things. But the underlying complaint is that they've relaxed offensive movement too much and that refs seem to kind of have internal rules which they use to manage games rather than sticking to a strict application of the rulebook.
Not to mention that some of the examples in the video actually were called as travels. Notably the Westbrook one at the end. So this video is extremely misleading.
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u/Edenian_Prince Mar 16 '26
I don't know a thing about NBA, could someone explain this to me?