What counts as traveling or double dribble in basketball?

Traveling means moving your established pivot foot while holding the ball without dribbling. Once you stop your dribble, one foot becomes the pivot and it must stay planted until you pass, shoot, or start a new dribble. A double dribble is either dribbling with both hands simultaneously or ending your dribble by picking up the ball and then dribbling again. Both are turnovers, with possession going to the other team.

The confusion for casual viewers comes from the gather. In the NBA, a player is allowed a gather step, the moment of collecting the ball out of the dribble, and then two steps after it, which means what looks like three steps on a driving layup is often perfectly legal. The rulebook was clarified explicitly in 2019 to codify what officials had been calling for years. FIBA and college rules define the gather slightly differently, which is why international and NCAA officiating can look stricter to NBA viewers. Carrying, sometimes called palming, is the related call: it happens when a dribbler puts a hand under the ball and pauses its momentum, effectively holding it mid-dribble, and it is called inconsistently enough at every level that it generates near-constant complaint.