That's not entirely accurate. People can be charged with murder when they didn't intend to kill someone under the felony murder rule if the death occurs when they're in the process of committing another felony. In this hypothetical, there's no criminal intent if someone is fouled in a basketball game. Even if the player intended to injure the other player, at most it would likely be a misdemeanor assault, so the felony murder rule wouldn't apply (plus the basketball injury wasn't the proximate cause of the death). Even if the basketball injury did cause the death, if there's insufficient criminal intent to charge the player with murder, then it would be manslaughter and the statute of limitations for manslaughter would have already lapsed by that point.