Basketball
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208 free Basketball trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
15 free Basketball trivia questions with answers. Basketball trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is NBA trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Which term for back-to-back-to-back championships did Lakers coach Pat Riley trademark in the late 1980s?
Three-peat
Three-peat was the word Riley's Lakers used while chasing a third straight title in 1989; they were swept in the Finals, but his company later earned royalties when other teams pulled it off.
Q 02In which city did basketball make its Olympic debut in 1936, played outdoors on tennis courts?
Berlin
Berlin's final was played in driving rain on a court that turned to mud, which is why the Americans beat Canada only 19-8; James Naismith was there to hand out the medals.
Q 03On which personal foul is an NBA player disqualified?
Sixth
Sixth foul and out has one exception: an NBA team may never drop below five players, so with no eligible substitute left the fouler stays on, at the cost of an extra penalty for that foul and every one after it.
Q 04Who is credited with inventing the sport of basketball?
James Naismith
James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor, invented basketball in December 1891 at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Q 05Which violation is called when a defender swats away a shot that is already on its way down to the basket?
Goaltending
Goaltending was only outlawed in the mid-1940s, after tall college centres began leaping above the rim to pluck shots away; until then the feat was thought to be physically impossible.
Q 06How does play begin at the start of every NBA game?
A jump ball
A jump ball once restarted play after every single basket as well; that rule is long gone, and the opening tip is now the only jump ball guaranteed in a game.
Q 07Which two NBA expansion teams joined the league for the 1988-89 season?
Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat
The Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat each lost more than 60 games in that first season, yet Charlotte still led the whole NBA in attendance.
Q 08What type of foul do NBA referees call for non-contact misconduct such as arguing a call?
Technical Foul
A technical foul gives the other team a free throw, and a player or coach who picks up two for unsportsmanlike conduct in one game is ejected.
Q 09Who holds the NBA record for the most points scored in a single regular season game?
Wilt Chamberlain
Wilt Chamberlain reportedly had not slept the night before he scored 100 against the Knicks on March 2, 1962, in a 169-147 win played in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Q 10What basketball defense has players guard areas of the court rather than individual opponents?
Zone defense
Zone defense is a strategic approach where each defender guards a specific area on the court and any offensive player who enters that area.
Q 11How many teams did the NBA have in the 2025-26 season?
30
30 has been the number since 2004, when Charlotte was given a new team two years after its original franchise moved to New Orleans.
Q 12Which NBA foul, defined as 'unnecessary and excessive contact', means immediate ejection?
Flagrant 2
Flagrant 2 is basketball's red card, ejecting a player on the spot; the milder Flagrant 1 is its yellow card, and it takes two of those in one game to be sent off.
Q 13Who won the first NBA Most Valuable Player award, for the 1955-56 season?
Bob Pettit
Bob Pettit won the first MVP award in 1956 after leading the league in both scoring and rebounding; two years later his 50 points won the deciding game of the Finals against Boston.
Q 21Under what name did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play high school and college basketball?
Lew Alcindor
Lew Alcindor won three straight NCAA titles at UCLA and an NBA title with Milwaukee under his birth name, then from 1971 played as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the name he took as a Muslim.
Q 22In which comedy film did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play Roger Murdock, who keeps insisting he isn't Kareem?
Airplane
Airplane! made him co-pilot Roger Murdock as a joke on Zero Hour!, the 1957 drama it parodies, in which football star Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch had played a pilot.
Q 23At which spot is the NBA three-point line closest to the basket, at 22 feet?
The corners
Q 14Basketball's inventor founded the men's basketball program at which university in 1898?
Kansas
Kansas hired Naismith in 1898 as chapel director and physical education teacher, not as a coach; the game's inventor went 55-60 and remains the only Jayhawks coach with a losing record.
Q 15What did the very first basketball goal consist of?
A peach basket
Naismith's first goal was a peach basket nailed to the gym balcony; its bottom was left intact at first, so the ball had to be fetched by hand after every score.
Q 16What colour were most basketballs before Butler coach Tony Hinkle introduced the orange ball in the late 1950s?
Brown
Brown balls were hard to follow, so Hinkle went looking for a colour that players and spectators could see more easily; his orange ball is now the standard everywhere.
Q 17In which film did Shaquille O'Neal star as a genie who emerges from a boombox?
Kazaam
Kazaam cast O'Neal as a 5,000-year-old genie who grants a boy three wishes, and he rapped on the soundtrack as well, on a track called 'We Genie'.
Q 18Which nickname did Wilt Chamberlain prefer to 'Wilt the Stilt'?
The Big Dipper
The Big Dipper, the story goes, came from friends who watched him dip his head under doorways; he disliked 'the Stilt' and 'Goliath' because they only drew attention to his height.
Q 19Michael Jordan retired before the 1993-94 season to play minor league baseball in which organisation?
Chicago White Sox
Jordan signed with the Chicago White Sox and played the 1994 season for their Double-A affiliate, the Birmingham Barons, before returning to win three more titles with the Bulls.
Q 20Which city's team drafted Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan in 1984?
Portland
The Portland Trail Blazers already had Clyde Drexler at Jordan's position and wanted a centre; Bowie's career was then wrecked by leg injuries, while Jordan went third to the Bulls.
The corners are 22 feet from the hoop against 23 feet 9 inches up top, because the line runs straight there, three feet inside each sideline, instead of following the arc.
Q 24Abe Saperstein's league introduced the three-point shot in 1961 as basketball's answer to which baseball play?
Home run
The home run was Saperstein's model for a shot that could change a game at a stroke: 'We must have a weapon,' he said of his new American Basketball League, 'and this is ours.'
Q 25Which Celtics guard, later the team's head coach, is credited with the first three-pointer in NBA history in 1979?
Chris Ford
Chris Ford's shot in the season opener against Houston earned the credit over one by Washington's Kevin Grevey the same night, only because the Boston game had tipped off 35 minutes earlier.
Q 26Which coach led Kentucky to its first four NCAA titles?
Adolph Rupp
Adolph Rupp won the title in 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958, and gave up the job in 1972 only because the University of Kentucky made its employees retire at 70.
Q 27Bill Russell led which college to consecutive NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956?
San Francisco Dons
San Francisco Dons teams built around Russell's shot-blocking won both titles; he then captained the United States to Olympic gold in Melbourne before playing a single NBA game.
Q 28In which city did the Harlem Globetrotters actually originate?
Chicago
Chicago's South Side was home to the original players; Abe Saperstein put 'Harlem' in the name to show that the team was Black, Harlem being the centre of African-American culture.
Q 29What is the Harlem Globetrotters' signature song?
Sweet Georgia Brown
Sweet Georgia Brown, a 1925 standard, was a 1949 hit for Brother Bones, who whistles the tune and clacks rhythm bones on the record; the Globetrotters made it their theme in 1952.
Q 30In 1950, which Duquesne star became the first Black player drafted by an NBA team?
Chuck Cooper
Chuck Cooper went to Boston with the first pick of the second round, but Earl Lloyd beat him onto an NBA court by a single day, because Washington's season opened first.