NBA Logo Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
78 free NBA Logo trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free NBA logo trivia questions with answers. This NBA logo trivia quiz is for fans who notice the details: whose silhouette dribbles across the league's own mark, which letter a spur replaces on the Spurs, why the Blazers' pinwheel is really ten players, and how much a Tucson printer charged the Suns for their first logo. It covers all thirty franchises plus the departed Sonics, Bobcats and Vancouver Grizzlies. The questions run from easy (the Bulls, the Lakers, the flaming Heat ball) to genuinely tough (the designers behind the Knicks, Bulls and Vancouver marks), so it works for a family sports night or a hardcore fan group chat. Because it is text-based, nobody needs to see the logos, which makes it ideal for read-aloud pub quiz rounds. Every answer has been checked against team histories and encyclopaedic sources, so the trivia holds up even against the fan who owns every throwback jersey.
30 of 78 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which player's silhouette is the basis of the NBA's own logo?
Jerry West
Jerry West was the dribbling Laker in a magazine photograph that designer Alan Siegel traced in 1969. The league has never officially confirmed it, yet West was known as "the Logo" for the rest of his life.
Q 02The Celtics' leprechaun logo was drawn by the brother of which Boston coach?
Red Auerbach
Red Auerbach had just taken over as coach when his younger brother Zang, a newspaper cartoonist, drew the leprechaun that replaced the club's plain shamrock in the early 1950s.
Q 03What is the name of the leprechaun on the Celtics logo?
Lucky
Lucky winks, rests one hand on a shillelagh and spins a ball on a fingertip. He was drawn in just three colours until a full-colour makeover for the club's 50th anniversary in 1996-97.
Q 04Which NBA team played its first 50 seasons without ever redesigning its primary logo?
Chicago Bulls
Chicago Bulls players have worn the same scowling red bull since the club joined the league in 1966. Founder Dick Klein is said to have settled on the name when his son dismissed his other ideas as a bunch of bull.
Q 05The Toronto Raptors' original dinosaur logo was inspired by the popularity of which film?
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park had put velociraptors on screen in 1993, and Raptors went on to beat shortlisted names such as Dragons, T-Rex and Hogs, a nod to Toronto's old nickname Hogtown.
Q 06Toronto dropped the idea of reviving the Huskies name because any logo would resemble which team's?
Minnesota Timberwolves
A nationwide contest chose the Raptors name and colours instead.
Q 07The Toronto Raptors' 2014 primary logo shows a basketball torn by what?
A raptor's claw
A raptor's claw slashes the left side of a silver ball, taking the place of the seams. Unveiled in December 2014, the badge retired the dribbling cartoon dinosaur the team had worn since 1995.
Q 08The Milwaukee Bucks are named after which animal, Wisconsin's official state wildlife animal?
The white-tailed deer
The white-tailed deer became the emblem in 1968 when contest judges picked Bucks, persuaded by one fan's case that bucks are spirited, fast, agile and good jumpers. His entry won him a new car.
Q 09The Bucks' deer mascot is named after an announcer's shout for long baskets; what is he called?
Bango
Bango was what Eddie Doucette, the team's first play-by-play voice, yelled whenever a Buck hit from long range. The word easily won the contest to name the new mascot, who first appeared in October 1977.
Q 10What does the Portland Trail Blazers' famous pinwheel logo actually depict?
Two teams lined up
Founder Harry Glickman's cousin designed it as a graphic of two five-on-five teams facing off.
Q 11The bridge on the Golden State Warriors' logo is not the Golden Gate but which other span?
The Bay Bridge
The Bay Bridge's new eastern span, still unfinished when the logo appeared in 2010, links the team's first California home in San Francisco with Oakland. The 1960s original, reading "The City", did show the Golden Gate.
Q 12The Atlanta Hawks' 1972-95 hawk-head logo is nicknamed after which video game character?
Pac-Man
Pac-Man is what fans saw in the round red hawk's head with its sharp beak. A modernised version returned as a secondary logo in 2014 and became the primary one a year later.
Q 13In the San Antonio Spurs logo, a stylised spur replaces which letter?
U
Q 21The Denver Nuggets' 1980s rainbow-skyline logo is nicknamed after which video game?
Tetris
The team ditched the rainbow colours for navy, gold and wine in 1993-94.
Q 22Maxie the Miner, the Denver Nuggets' 1970s cartoon logo, held a basketball in one hand and what in the other?
A pickaxe
A pickaxe stayed in the cartoon miner's grip as Denver moved from the ABA to the NBA in 1976. He was retired in the early 1980s, but crossed pickaxes returned on the logo the team adopted in the late 2010s.
Q 23Stan Fabe, a Tucson printer, designed the Phoenix Suns' first logo for how much?
$200
$200 bought the sunburst from Fabe after the team had already paid a local artist $5,000 for a design it did not like.
U gives way to a riding spur in the wordmark the club has used since it arrived in San Antonio in 1973. Before the move it had been the Dallas Chaparrals, with a running bird for a badge.
Q 14The Spurs' 1989-2002 logo used which unusual colour set, known as the Fiesta colours?
Pink, orange and turquoise
Pink, orange and turquoise filled the logo while the game uniforms stayed silver and black the whole time. The colours reached a Spurs jersey in 2020, on a Fiesta-themed City Edition.
Q 15What kind of animal's head, with a flaming mane, featured on the Detroit Pistons logo from 1996 to 2005?
A horse
A horse stood for horsepower, a pun on the engine part the team is named after. The logo went in 2005, but Hooper, the horse mascot adopted alongside it in 1996, outlived it.
Q 16The 76ers' first logo in 1963 carried a ring of stars to represent what?
The thirteen colonies
The thirteen colonies declared independence in Philadelphia in 1776, the year the team is named after. The ring of stars returned when the club revived its classic look in place of a darker 1990s design.
Q 17The Utah Jazz's music-note logo, with a note forming the J, honours which city as the birthplace of jazz?
New Orleans
New Orleans was the team's home from 1974 to 1979. When it moved to Salt Lake City it kept the name, the note and even the Mardi Gras colours, which lasted until 1996.
Q 18The Utah Jazz's 1996 purple-mountains logo was developed from the logo of which 1993 event in Salt Lake City?
The NBA All-Star Game
The NBA All-Star Game of 1993 got a mountain logo from league creative director Tom O'Grady, who had been struck by the colours of the Wasatch Range as he flew in. The Jazz liked it enough to ask him for a full rebrand.
Q 19The Houston Rockets' 1972-95 logo, a ball with two trails, was nicknamed after which condiments?
Ketchup and mustard
Ketchup and mustard was the fans' name for the red and yellow. After the 1995 title the club switched to navy blue and a cartoon rocket, then made red its main colour again in 2003.
Q 20What weapon pierced the words "Cleveland Cavaliers" on the logo the team adopted when LeBron James arrived?
A sword
A sword first appeared in the grip of the swashbuckling cavalier on the original logo. It vanished for about twenty years, returned in 2003 and left the primary logo again in 2022.
Q 24In the Orlando Magic's original 1989 logo, a star replaced which letter of the team name?
The A
The A became a star in both Orlando and Magic on the 1989 original, drawn up after meetings with Walt Disney World artists. The 2025 retro rebrand brought the star letter back.
Q 25The Miami Heat's primary logo is best described as what?
A flaming basketball
A chrome-treated version starred on the sleeved "Big Logo" uniforms of 2013.
Q 26One Pelicans secondary logo combines a pelican, a crescent basketball and which other emblem?
A fleur-de-lis
A fleur-de-lis gives the mark its punning name, the Bird-de-Lis. The lily has long flown on the city's flag, and a red one also tops the team's main logo.
Q 27In 2004 the Memphis Grizzlies swapped their Vancouver-era turquoise for a blue named after which Memphis road?
Beale Street
Beale Street blue, named for the city's famous strip of blues clubs, arrived in the 2004 redesign. FedExForum, the team's home arena, stands on the same street.
Q 28Vancouver's NBA team was first named after which Canadian institution, until that institution objected?
The Mounties
The Mounties was the first choice in 1994, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police objected, so that August the club became the Grizzlies and put a bear on its logo instead.
Q 29The Thunder's sunset shade was chosen to sit between the colours of which college programmes?
The Sooners and the Cowboys
The Sooners and the Cowboys wear crimson and orange, so owner Clay Bennett described the sunset shade as "not too red and not too orange". The sky blue came from the Oklahoma state flag.
Q 30In 1992 the Knicks redrew their classic roundball logo and set the ball on which shape?
A triangle
A triangle went behind the ball in 1992 and survived the recolour of the early 2010s, which dropped black from the palette and changed nothing else.