A personal foul is a rules infraction involving illegal physical contact with an opponent, charged to the individual player.
The personal foul is the sport's basic unit of discipline. Illegal contact, a shove, a hold, a reach across the arms on a shot, a moving screen, is charged to the individual, and the numbers follow a player through the game: six personal fouls in the NBA mean disqualification, the familiar fouling out. Teams accumulate them too, and once a side passes the team foul limit in a quarter, every further foul sends the opponent to the free throw line.
Fouls are a strategy as well as a sin. Defenders budget them, saving aggression for the possessions that matter; offences hunt them, driving at players carrying four or five; and the deliberate foul at the end of games, trading free throws for clock, is a fully legal use of the rule that fills the last minute of close games with arithmetic.
Flagrant fouls, the dangerous contact tier, and clear path and away from the play fouls are specialized members of the family, each with its own penalty ladder. In the record book, fouls are history too: career foul totals, fastest disqualifications, and the famous sixth foul in a Finals game are all quiz grade material.
In use"He picked up his fourth personal foul early in the third quarter and had to sit."