NBA 2023 Trivia
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47 free NBA 2023 trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
2023 was one of the strangest and best years the NBA has had: Denver finally won it all behind Nikola Jokić, an eighth-seeded Miami team went through the play-in and knocked out the top-seeded Bucks, LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, two players scored 71 in a game, Luka Dončić posted a 60-20-10 triple-double, the Kings ended a 16-year playoff drought, Victor Wembanyama arrived and the league staged its first In-Season Tournament in Las Vegas. This NBA trivia 2023 quiz covers all of it: the 2022-23 regular season and its awards (Embiid's MVP, Banchero, Jaren Jackson Jr., Markkanen), the playoffs game by game, the Finals, the draft, the All-Star Game in Salt Lake City, the summer trades (Lillard, Durant, Irving, Beal, Chris Paul), the coaching changes, the ownership sales and the FIBA World Cup. Questions range from easy for anyone who watched to genuinely hard for people who followed every transaction. Every answer is checked against documented season records and box scores rather than memory, so it holds up in a bar argument.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which team won the 2023 NBA Finals?
Denver Nuggets
Denver Nuggets. Every other club that came over from the ABA had already played in a Finals; Denver got there last, in its 47th NBA season, and won the title at the first attempt.
Q 02Who was unanimously named MVP of the 2023 NBA Finals?
Nikola Jokić
Nikola Jokić. Picked 41st in 2014, his name scrolling along a ticker while ESPN aired a Taco Bell advert, he became the lowest draft pick ever named Finals MVP.
Q 03Which guard posted a 2023 NBA Finals triple-double?
Jamal Murray
Jamal Murray. After missing a tying three at the buzzer of Game 2, he had 34 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists in Game 3 while his centre put up 32, 21 and 10, the first teammates with 30-point triple-doubles in one game.
Q 04The 2023 Miami Heat were the second eighth seed to reach the NBA Finals; which team was the first, in 1999?
New York Knicks
New York Knicks. They scraped in at 27-23 after a lockout cut the season to 50 games, then began their run by knocking out Miami itself in the first round.
Q 05Which star said there's 'no failure in sports' after his top-seeded team lost to an eighth seed in the 2023 NBA playoffs?
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Giannis Antetokounmpo. He had missed two games of Milwaukee's five-game loss to Miami with a bruised back, and told the reporter who asked about failure that it was 'the wrong question'.
Q 06Who set a Heat playoff record with 56 points in a first-round upset in 2023?
Jimmy Butler
Jimmy Butler. He scored 22 in the first quarter and 21 in the fourth of a comeback win that put eighth-seeded Miami 3-1 up on the team with the NBA's best record.
Q 07Whose putback at the buzzer won Game 6 of the 2023 East finals and forced a Game 7?
Derrick White
Derrick White. He tipped in a teammate's miss to win 104-103 in Miami, but two nights later Boston lost Game 7 at home by 19, one win short of the first comeback from 3-0 down.
Q 08Which Memphis player called 38-year-old LeBron James 'old' during their 2023 first-round playoff series?
Dillon Brooks
Dillon Brooks. 'I poke bears,' he added, but James's seventh-seeded Lakers won the series in six games and Brooks left Memphis for Houston that summer.
Q 09Which coach ended Sacramento's 16-season playoff drought in 2023 and became the NBA's first unanimous Coach of the Year?
Mike Brown
Mike Brown. All 100 voters picked him after his first season in charge, yet the Kings fired him less than halfway through his third, in December 2024.
Q 10Who scored 50 points in Game 7 against Sacramento in 2023, the first 50-point Game 7 in NBA history?
Stephen Curry
Stephen Curry. He passed Kevin Durant's Game 7 record of 48 on Sacramento's own floor, but his new mark lasted only two weeks before it was beaten.
Q 11Which 10-time All-Star retired in May 2023 without ever playing in an NBA Finals?
Carmelo Anthony
Carmelo Anthony. He announced it on the very day the team that drafted him clinched its first Finals trip, 19 seasons and three Olympic golds into a career that never reached one.
Q 12On February 7, 2023, LeBron James passed whom to become the NBA's all-time leading scorer?
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had held the record since April 1984, nearly nine months before James was born, and was in the building to embrace his successor the night it fell.
Q 13Which two players each scored 71 points in a game during the 2022-23 season?
Q 21Whose number 6 did the NBA retire league-wide in 2022, the first such honour in its history?
Bill Russell
Bill Russell. He had died that July at 88 after winning 11 titles in 13 seasons with Boston, and players who already wore 6 were allowed to keep it.
Q 22Who scored a record 55 points in the 2023 All-Star Game and was named its MVP?
Jayson Tatum
Jayson Tatum. He beat Anthony Davis's old mark by three, helped by a playful third-quarter duel in which he and a Boston teammate on the other side took turns going one-on-one.
Q 23Where was the 2023 All-Star Game held, 30 years after the venue last hosted it?
Salt Lake City
Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell
Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell's came in an overtime win after Cleveland trailed by 21, the most points anyone had scored since Kobe Bryant's 81 in 2006, and Lillard matched it eight weeks later.
Q 14On December 27, 2022, who became the first player ever to record a 60-point, 20-rebound triple-double?
Luka Dončić
Luka Dončić. His team trailed by nine with 33 seconds left, and he forced overtime by missing a free throw on purpose and scoring off the rebound; teams in that position had gone 0-13,884 over the previous 20 seasons.
Q 15Who won the 2022-23 NBA Rookie of the Year award?
Paolo Banchero
Paolo Banchero. Orlando's choice of him first overall had been a surprise after weeks of talk that it preferred Jabari Smith Jr., and he repaid it by taking 98 of the 100 first-place votes.
Q 16Which big man won the 2022-23 Defensive Player of the Year award?
Jaren Jackson Jr.
Jaren Jackson Jr. He sat out the opening weeks of the season after surgery on a stress fracture in his foot, yet still led the league with 3.0 blocks a game.
Q 17Which forward won the 2022-23 Most Improved Player award in his first season with Utah?
Lauri Markkanen
Lauri Markkanen. Cleveland gave him up in a trade for a star guard, and in Utah he jumped from 14.8 points a game to 25.6 and made his first All-Star team.
Q 18Which Celtics guard was the 2022-23 Sixth Man of the Year?
Malcolm Brogdon
Malcolm Brogdon. He had started every game he played for four years, then agreed to come off Boston's bench and did not start once all season.
Q 19Which brand-new award, first handed out in 2023, went to Sacramento's De'Aaron Fox?
Clutch Player of the Year
Clutch Player of the Year. The trophy is named for Jerry West, known as 'Mr. Clutch', and Fox won it by scoring a league-high 194 points in the last five minutes of close games.
Q 20After whom did the NBA rename its Most Valuable Player trophy in 2022-23?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan. The trophy stands 23.6 inches tall, for his number 23 and his six titles, and sits on a five-sided base for his five MVP awards.
Salt Lake City. When it last hosted, in 1993, the West won in overtime and Utah's own Karl Malone and John Stockton shared the MVP award on their home court.
Q 24Which 7-foot-4 French centre went first overall in the 2023 draft?
Victor Wembanyama
Victor Wembanyama. He left the stage in tears, saying 'I've got to cry', then justified the hype by taking all 99 first-place votes for Rookie of the Year.
Q 25Which team won the 2023 NBA draft lottery and with it the first overall pick?
San Antonio Spurs
San Antonio Spurs. It was their third lottery win; the first two had brought David Robinson in 1987 and Tim Duncan in 1997, and five championships followed.
Q 26Which Alabama forward did Charlotte take second overall in the 2023 draft, ahead of Scoot Henderson?
Brandon Miller
Brandon Miller. Charlotte brought both players back for a second round of workouts that week, then chose the wing who could play beside its point guard, LaMelo Ball.
Q 27Which twin brothers were taken with consecutive picks, fourth and fifth, in the 2023 NBA draft?
Amen and Ausar Thompson
Amen and Ausar Thompson. Born a minute apart, the identical twins went to Houston and Detroit, heading in separate directions for really the first time.
Q 28Scoot Henderson, the third pick in 2023, skipped college to play for which team?
NBA G League Ignite
NBA G League Ignite. The league set the team up to pay top prospects who skipped college, then closed it in 2024 once college players could earn endorsement money themselves.
Q 29Which player did Milwaukee trade to Portland for Damian Lillard in 2023, only to see him win the 2024 title with Boston?
Jrue Holiday
Jrue Holiday. Portland kept him for just four days before sending him on to Boston, and the next spring he was a champion again while Milwaukee went out in the first round.
Q 30Kevin Durant was traded from Brooklyn to which team in February 2023?
Phoenix Suns
Phoenix Suns. They paid Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and four first-round picks, won a single playoff series with Durant, and traded him on to Houston in 2025.