Dribbling is one of the most important features when it comes to the sport of basketball. There really isn’t a more important rule to remember when participating in this sport. When you don’t dribble, you can’t move with the ball. It’s simple as that. However, there’s more questions that can be answered when it comes to dribbling. For example, can you bounce the ball above your head in basketball?
The answer to this question is yes, you can definitely bounce the ball above your head in basketball. However, it doesn’t provide you with any type of advantage. In most cases, bouncing the ball this high will result in you losing control of it and the other team having an increased chance of stealing it away from you. From a competitive standpoint, there’s no real reason to bounce the ball that high. From a legal standpoint, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so either.
That’s not the end of this conversation though, because there’s definitely some more we need to talk about regarding a player bouncing the ball over their own head.
Why It Might Help
We mentioned earlier that there’s not much of a reason for you to bounce the ball over your head. Although, there could definitely be an advantage if you’re lucky, even if it’s a small chance. Let’s say that you have space between yourself and the defender, and you think that you can make it uncontested to the rim if you get past him. You’re thinking of ways to get around him, but he’s blocking you off well. You could attempt to bounce the ball up and over his head and run around him to regain possession and finish the layup off at the rim.
Of course, this sounds good in theory, but not much in practice. In the majority of instances, if you attempt this type of bounce, it will be stolen out of the air by your defender. Plus, even if you get around the initial defender, there’s a strong chance that a help defender will be meeting you at the rim to keep you from scoring. Outside of this scenario, there’s not much of a reason to bounce it up that high.
Why It Wouldn’t Help
There are tons of reasons why bouncing the ball that high wouldn’t help. The first and most obvious is that you give the ball away. You and your teammates wouldn’t be happy if you just handed the basketball over to the other team and gave them an extra offensive possession. For anybody that’s competitive, it’s the last thing they want to see. And to make matters worse, bouncing it that high essentially guarantees a turnover or a broken play, neither would help you win games.
Another reason why it wouldn’t help is that people would shut it down before you even bounce it. If you’re looking to get it high enough to go over your head, you’d likely have to get some space and spend more time throwing the ball off the ground. That small amount of time needed to pull it off would allow the defender to catch on and just smack it out of the way to strip it from you. You just wouldn’t have the available time to pull it off.
Can You Dribble Over Somebody?
Now, you might be wondering if you can dribble the basketball over somebody if they happen to hit the deck, and you can. In basketball, you’re going to have instances where you or your defender will fall down. If your defender falls over in the middle of a play, you can dribble the ball over them on the ground and keep on pushing forward. You don’t have to stop and go around them to avoid a penalty.
However, the player on the ground has an opportunity to bring their arms up and knock the ball away from you even though they are on the ground. So, the bottom line is that if you want to dribble over a player that fell onto the ground, be sure that you have strong control of the ball and that you don’t hover it directly over their arms. Otherwise, you’d have to be getting back on defense.
Dribbling On The Ground
We just talked about how you could dribble over a defender if they fall onto the ground, but what if you fall to the ground with the ball? Would you be able to keep on dribbling? Yes, you can. If you fall in the middle of your dribble, most times the officials will allow you to keep on dribbling and push your way back up onto your feet. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to accomplish considering how a defender is likely still covering you, but if you can pull it off, it’s legal.
You could even stay on the ground and keep dribbling if you want to and are able to maintain control without getting it stripped from you. Though, this wouldn’t help you out in any way in regard to actually winning a basketball game. Still though, it’s possible for you to accomplish it if you’d like to go that route.
Off Of Somebody’s Head
This might not be very sportsmanlike, but you can legally bounce the ball off of another player’s head during a game in basketball. We’ve seen it on highlights over the years at all levels of professional basketball, and it’s very annoying if you’re the defensive player. You can bounce it off their head and continue dribbling it because the ball hitting them resets the dribble.
If you’re inbounding the ball or stuck in a dribble, you could easily throw the ball at another defender, let it bounce off them, then run and regain possession to keep on trucking forward. It doesn’t work all the time because they could react quickly enough to steal it, but it can be done in certain instances when necessary.