Actually, when a team is down to 5 players, once a player commits 6 fouls, he stays in the game, but any foul after the 6th is both a technical and a personal foul.

If one of the 5 players on the floor is injured or disqualified, than one of the disqualified players on the bench can enter (in reverse order of disqualification) with a technical foul assessed for the substitution.

(Spending 2 years at a pro-rule summer league helped me nail this rule :D )

Ok, thanks for the correction. It's been a long time since I actually tried to know the NBA rules, but I thought I had that one right. So once you're down to 5 players, you play the rest of the game with those 5 players, unless one gets hurt? That makes sense.

I actually combined the two rules in my head, sorry.

Not a problem. :) But yes, when a team is down to 5 players under NBA rules, those 5 players finish the game barring injury or ejection.

The scorer is required to record the time when a player is disqualified so that in the event a previously-disqualified player has to re-enter the game to maintain 5 players, the disqualified players enter in the proper order (most recent first, I believe).

At the same league, we had a game where one of the teams had just 5 players show up. In the third quarter, one went down with a sprained ankle and his team had to default. Since it was the last game of the night, that made up for being behind schedule. :D

Did they see you trip him?:D