Did the NBA always have the 6 foul limit or were they at 5 one time like college. Does anyone recall what year they changed if it was changed.

As long as I can remember, the NBA has allowed six fouls. It's possible that if it was changed, it occurred when the ABA and NBA combined, as many other changes were made at that time.

If you go back to the very early days of pro basketball in the US (late 40s), the individual foul limit was four! The reasoning was that you should be able to average less than one per quarter. Please realize that this was before the NBA became the only pro major league, so I don't know about the actual NBA history.

I found this tidbit in George Mikan's book.

I think that I read somewhere that the NBA pegged the limit at 6 fouls when they increased the game time from 40 minutes to 48 minutes. There were 5 fouls allowed in a 40 minute game, so adding 20% more time correspondingly meant adding 20% more fouls--i.e. 20% of 5 fouls = 1 foul--for a total of 6.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Did you ever officiate any of George's games, Mark? :D

No - I was before his time.

Thanks everyone for the heads up Grreat replies