Wheelchair basketball words · Beginner

Basketball played by two teams of five players in wheelchairs, governed by the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation. The aim is to score in the opponents' basket and prevent the other team scoring. A game is four quarters of ten minutes.

The wheelchair is considered part of the player. A player's location is where the wheelchair touches the floor, and a player is out of bounds when any part of the body or wheelchair touches the floor on or outside the boundary line. A wheelchair that breaks the equipment rules is banned from the game.

Each player has a classification of 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 or 4.5, a lower number meaning more activity limitation. The value is on the player's Official Player Classification ID card, issued by the IWBF Player Classification Commission, and may change during a tournament up until the play-off round.

In the IWBF's main competitions the classification points of the five players on court may never total more than 14. If a team exceeds it, the coach is charged with a technical foul and the line-up is corrected at once. Other competitions may use a different total.

The wheelchair version of travelling. A player holding the ball may take no more than two pushes of the large wheels, and pivot movements count as part of the dribble and are limited to two consecutive pushes without dribbling. Braking a wheel without moving the hand backward or forward is not a push. A third push is a violation.

Raising the buttocks so that both cheeks leave the seat or cushion to gain an unfair advantage, for example to shoot, rebound, pass, block a shot or contest a tap-off. It is a technical foul, giving one free throw to the opponents, or free throws to the shooter if it was a block on a shot. Leaning forward to pick up a ball from the floor and lifting is a violation.

Each player has the right to the space on the court occupied by their wheelchair and torso, an imaginary cylinder that includes the air space above. It is bounded in front by the palms of the hands and the footrest or horizontal bar, behind and at the sides by the outside edges of the large wheels. A player who leaves their cylinder and makes contact with an opponent who had already established theirs is responsible for the contact.