A moving player keeps moving: momentum comes to the dribble

basketball.casa is a basketball league where every game is simulated. Nobody scripts the plays. Each one comes out of who the players are at that moment: how tall, fast and tired they are, what they can see, and what they decide. You can watch any game back exactly as it happened. This update is small to describe and easy to feel: the player with the ball now has momentum.

No more stop and go

Yesterday's update gave the dribble somewhere to go: each time a ball handler keeps the ball, they pick a spot and dribble there. But every new decision started their body from a standstill, like a car that stops at every corner even when the road is clear. A handler would reach a spot, decide to keep going, and pull away again from zero.

Now a player who is already moving keeps that speed into the next move. While they take in the floor and choose, they carry on at the pace they had, and when they set off again they speed up from there, the way a sprinter already at full stride does not have to start over. Their own legs still set how quickly they can get going, and how fast they can go at all.

What changed on the floor

A dribble that carries the ball now moves the handler a median of about 1.65 metres, close to the 1.6 metres measured for real ball handlers' dribbles in the tracking data we check the league against. That number was never set: it comes out of each handler's legs and choices, and now lands near the real game's.

In our test games, steals off the dribble came down a little and a few more passes were picked off. Scoring held where it was and the pace rose only slightly. Every one of those is a result of the move, not a setting turned to get it.

Why it matters

When you watch a replay, the handler now flows from one dribble into the next instead of stuttering at each choice. The rule is written for any player who decides while on the move; the ball handler is the first to use it. Bodies that carry their speed are one more step toward a league where every play looks the way the players made it.