Round 1: superstars of the 1990s and 2000s (easy)
This is the era most rooms share. If your players watched basketball at any point between the Dream Team and the first Miami superteam, these names came through the television whether they followed the league or not — Shaquille O'Neal sold soft drinks and made films, Yao Ming carried a television audience of hundreds of millions, and LeBron James arrived with a magazine cover before he had played a professional minute.
Read these fast and let the room shout. Draft questions work particularly well as openers because there is a guessable logic to them: the bad team picks first, and the famous rookie usually landed somewhere nobody wanted to be.
Q1.Michael Jordan retired with the highest career scoring average in NBA history. What is it, to one decimal place?Tap to reveal
Answer: 30.1 points per game
Jordan scored 32,292 points in 1,072 regular-season games, which works out at 30.12 a night. Wilt Chamberlain is the only player anywhere near him at 30.07 — both round to 30.1, and Jordan holds the record by five hundredths of a point.
Q2.Shaquille O'Neal was the first overall pick of the 1992 draft. In which year did he win Rookie of the Year?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1993
He was drafted in June 1992 out of LSU and won the award for the 1992-93 season, averaging 23.4 points and 13.9 rebounds for the Orlando Magic. The rookie who arrives one year and wins the award the next is a reliable trap in trivia.
Q3.Which team did Shaquille O'Neal join when the Los Angeles Lakers traded him in the summer of 2004?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Miami Heat
Los Angeles sent him to Miami for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Brian Grant and a first-round pick. Two seasons later he won a fourth championship there. He also had a genuine second career in music: his 1993 debut album Shaq Diesel went platinum.
Q4.Who became the first Cleveland Cavalier to be named Rookie of the Year, at the age of 19?Tap to reveal
Answer: LeBron James
For the 2003-04 season, after Cleveland took him first overall straight out of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, his home town. He averaged 20.9 points, 5.9 assists and 5.5 rebounds as a teenager.
Q5.LeBron James carried which team to the 2007 NBA Finals, where they were swept?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Cleveland Cavaliers
San Antonio won the Finals 4-0. The series everyone remembers is the one before it: James scored 48 points in a double-overtime Game 5 against Detroit, including 29 of Cleveland's last 30.
Q6.Which team made Yao Ming the first overall pick of the 2002 NBA draft?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Houston Rockets
Yao was the first player taken first overall who had never played basketball in the United States at any level — Kwame Brown had gone first in 2001, but out of an American high school. He stood 7 ft 6 in, outpolled Shaquille O’Neal in the fan vote for the All-Star Game as a rookie, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016.
Q7.Who won the 2000 NBA Slam Dunk Contest?Tap to reveal
Answer: Vince Carter
Carter's round in Oakland — including the dunk where he hung by his forearm inside the rim — is the one contest people still cite. Later that year at the Sydney Olympics he jumped clean over France's 7 ft 2 in centre Frederic Weis.
Q8.Which team drafted Kevin Garnett fifth overall in 1995, straight out of high school?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Minnesota Timberwolves
Garnett came from Farragut Career Academy in Chicago and was the first player drafted directly out of high school in twenty years. Nicknamed "The Big Ticket", he won the MVP award with Minnesota in 2004.
Q9.Which team took Carmelo Anthony third overall in the 2003 NBA draft?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Denver Nuggets
He arrived having just won the NCAA championship as a Syracuse freshman. Denver had won 17 games the season before he came; with him they won 43 and made the playoffs.
Q10.Which team drafted Tracy McGrady out of high school in 1997?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Toronto Raptors
Toronto took him ninth overall out of Mount Zion Christian Academy, and for three seasons he played alongside his cousin Vince Carter. His two scoring titles came later, with Orlando in 2003 and 2004.
Q11.Which guard completed the Milwaukee Bucks' "Big Three" alongside Ray Allen and Glenn Robinson?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sam Cassell
That group took Milwaukee to the 2001 Eastern Conference finals, losing in seven games to Philadelphia; Robinson was traded to Atlanta in the summer of 2002 and Cassell followed him out the year after. Cassell won championships at the start and the end of his career — Houston in 1994 and 1995, Boston in 2008.
Q12.Which rookie, by his own telling, asked Michael Jordan to shoot a free throw with his eyes closed and heard "Welcome to the NBA" after it went in?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dikembe Mutombo
Mutombo told the story for decades in interviews; he was a Denver Nuggets rookie in 1991-92, drafted out of Georgetown. He went on to win Defensive Player of the Year four times and built a hospital in Kinshasa, the city he came from.
Q13.Which veteran centre, traded to Toronto in the December 2004 Vince Carter deal, never reported to the Raptors?Tap to reveal
Answer: Alonzo Mourning
Toronto bought out his contract in February 2005 and he went back to Miami, where he came off the bench in the 2006 Finals and blocked five shots in the closing game. He had received a kidney transplant from his cousin in December 2003.
Round 2: records, heights and firsts
The questions here are the durable ones — single-game marks that have stood for sixty years, and physical extremes that nobody has matched. That is deliberate. A cumulative record is a question with an expiry date, but nobody is going to score 101 points in a game, and the league has not signed anyone taller than 7 ft 7 in or shorter than 5 ft 3 in.
This round is a good place to allow near-misses. If a team says "about 50" for Chamberlain's rebounding night, that is a team that knows something, and giving a half point for it keeps them in the game.
Q1.How many points did Wilt Chamberlain score against the New York Knicks on 2 March 1962?Tap to reveal
Answer: 100
Philadelphia beat New York 169-147 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in front of roughly 4,000 people. Chamberlain went 36 of 63 from the floor and 28 of 32 from the free-throw line — remarkable for a career 51 percent free-throw shooter. No film of the game survives.
Q2.Wilt Chamberlain's record for rebounds in a single game came against which team, and how many did he take?Tap to reveal
Answer: 55, against the Boston Celtics
24 November 1960, with Bill Russell opposite him. Chamberlain also holds the career rebounding record at 23,924 and the record season average, 27.2 a game in 1960-61.
Q3.Who was the first player in NBA history to score 20,000 career points?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bob Pettit
Pettit passed the mark in 1964 with the St. Louis Hawks and retired the following year with 20,880 points in eleven seasons, averaging 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds. He was also the first winner of the MVP award, in 1956, and won it again in 1959.
Q4.How many NBA franchises did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play for across his twenty seasons?Tap to reveal
Answer: Two — the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers
Six seasons in Milwaukee, fourteen in Los Angeles. He finished with 38,387 points, a record that stood from 1984 until LeBron James passed it in February 2023, and six MVP awards, which is still the most any player has won.
Q5.Manute Bol and Gheorghe Muresan are the tallest players in NBA history. What height were they listed at?Tap to reveal
Answer: 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m)
Bol, born in Sudan, was taken 31st in the 1985 draft and is the only player in NBA history to finish with more blocked shots (2,086) than points (1,599). Muresan, from Romania, was the league's Most Improved Player in 1996.
Q6.Who is the shortest player in NBA history?Tap to reveal
Answer: Muggsy Bogues, at 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m)
Washington took him 12th overall in 1987 and he lasted fourteen seasons, ten of them with the Charlotte Hornets, finishing with 6,858 points and 6,726 assists. Height was never the obstacle people assumed: he was among the hardest guards in the league to steal from.
Q7.Who is the shortest player ever to win the NBA Slam Dunk Contest?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spud Webb
Webb, listed at 5 ft 7 in by the NBA and 5 ft 6 in by Basketball-Reference, won in 1986 in Dallas — beating his own Atlanta teammate Dominique Wilkins, the defending champion, who had no idea he could dunk like that. Nobody shorter has won since; Nate Robinson, who won three, is 5 ft 9 in.
Q8.Which ABA team drafted Moses Malone in 1974, making him the first modern player to go straight from high school to the professional game?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Utah Stars
Utah took him in the third round out of Petersburg High School in Virginia, two years before the ABA merged into the NBA. He won three MVP awards — Houston in 1979 and 1982, Philadelphia in 1983 — and is the only player to win it in consecutive seasons for two different teams.
Q9.Who, in 1979, became the first woman to sign a contract with an NBA team?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ann Meyers, with the Indiana Pacers
A $50,000 no-cut contract. She attended the tryout, did not make the roster, and joined the team's broadcast booth as a colour analyst. In 1974 she had already become the first high-school player named to the U.S. national team and the first woman given a four-year athletic scholarship to UCLA; she entered the Hall of Fame in 1993.
Round 3: MVPs, Finals MVPs and one sportsmanship trophy
Awards make good trivia because they are dated and settled — the vote happened, the trophy was handed over, and nothing that happens later changes it. The second half of this round runs through the Finals MVPs of the 1970s, 1970 to 1979 with one deliberate gap: Willis Reed won it in 1973 as well as 1970, so it is not asked twice. That is the point where casual players start guessing and the person who grew up on those teams starts scoring.
If your room is young, read the 1970s run as a team round and let them confer. Half the names — Havlicek, Rick Barry, Bill Walton — are famous enough to be recognised even by people who never saw them play.
Q1.Karl Malone won the MVP award for the 1996-97 season while playing for which team?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Utah Jazz
The Jazz reached the Finals that season and lost to Michael Jordan's Bulls; they did it again the following year. Malone retired with 36,928 career points and a second MVP award from 1999.
Q2.Who was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player for the 2004-05 season?Tap to reveal
Answer: Steve Nash
His first season back in Phoenix, running Mike D'Antoni's offence: the Suns went from 29-53 to 62-20. He won it again the following year, making him one of a small group of back-to-back winners, and he is Canadian.
Q3.In which two seasons did Tim Duncan win the regular-season MVP award?Tap to reveal
Answer: 2002 and 2003
Not 2001, which is the common slip — that was Allen Iverson's year. Duncan, "The Big Fundamental", won five championships with San Antonio between 1999 and 2014 and was Finals MVP three times.
Q4.Kevin Garnett won his only MVP award in 2004 with which team?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Minnesota Timberwolves
He averaged 24.2 points and 13.9 rebounds and took Minnesota to the Western Conference finals — the only time the franchise got that far with him. He was traded to Boston in 2007 and won the championship in his first season there.
Q5.Who was named Most Valuable Player of the 2001 NBA All-Star Game?Tap to reveal
Answer: Allen Iverson
The East trailed by 21 points in the fourth quarter and won 111-110. Iverson scored 25, fifteen of them in the last nine minutes. He won the regular-season MVP award the same season, at a listed 6 ft — the shortest MVP the league has had.
Q6.Who won the NBA Finals MVP award in 2006?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dwyane Wade
Miami lost the first two games to Dallas and then won four in a row. Wade averaged 34.7 points across the series and delivered the franchise its first championship, with Shaquille O'Neal and Alonzo Mourning alongside him.
Q7.Which player won the NBA Sportsmanship Award for 2004-05, after four operations on his ankle had cost him most of four seasons?Tap to reveal
Answer: Grant Hill
He won it with Orlando, and won it twice more, in 2008 and 2010. The trophy is named for Joe Dumars, its first recipient in 1996. Hill had shared Rookie of the Year with Jason Kidd a decade earlier.
Q8.Which player, nicknamed "The Captain", was the 1970 NBA Finals MVP?Tap to reveal
Answer: Willis Reed
The Knicks beat the Lakers 4-3, and Reed's limping entrance before Game 7 is the most replayed moment of the decade. He took the regular-season MVP, the All-Star Game MVP and the Finals MVP in the same season.
Q9.Which centre was the 1971 NBA Finals MVP, winning it under a name he would change a few months later?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won it as Lew Alcindor
Milwaukee swept the Baltimore Bullets 4-0 for the franchise's only title until 2021. He announced the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar publicly in 1971, having converted to Islam as a student.
Q10.Which player, nicknamed "The Big Dipper", was the 1972 NBA Finals MVP?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wilt Chamberlain
The Lakers beat the Knicks 4-1 at the end of a season in which they won 33 consecutive games — a streak that has never been approached. Chamberlain disliked the nickname "Wilt the Stilt" and preferred "The Big Dipper".
Q11.Name the 1974 NBA Finals MVP, nicknamed "Hondo".Tap to reveal
Answer: John Havlicek
Boston beat Milwaukee 4-3, taking Game 7 on the road against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Havlicek's nickname came from a supposed resemblance to John Wayne in the film Hondo.
Q12.Who was the 1975 NBA Finals MVP, after Golden State swept the heavily favoured Washington Bullets?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rick Barry
A 4-0 sweep almost nobody predicted. Barry is remembered as much for his underhand free throws, which he shot at close to 90 percent for his career while the rest of the league refused to try it.
Q13.Who was the NBA Finals MVP in 1976, the year of the triple-overtime game at Boston Garden?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jo Jo White
Boston beat Phoenix 4-2. White played 60 minutes in the triple-overtime Game 5, the game usually named the greatest in Finals history, and scored 33 points.
Q14.Which red-headed centre was the NBA Finals MVP in 1977?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bill Walton
Portland lost the first two games to Philadelphia and won the next four. Walton had won two NCAA championships at UCLA under John Wooden; injuries then took most of the rest of his career.
Q15.Who was the NBA Finals MVP in 1978?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wes Unseld
Washington beat Seattle 4-3, winning Game 7 on the road. Unseld was only the second player, after Wilt Chamberlain, to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season, which he did in 1969.
Q16.Who was the NBA Finals MVP in 1979?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dennis Johnson
Seattle beat Washington 4-1 in a rematch of the previous year's Finals, reversing the result. Johnson later won two more championships with Boston alongside Larry Bird.
Round 4: Hall of Fame names and a long look at Larry Bird
Four questions on players whose careers reached beyond basketball, and then seven on one man. Larry Bird earns his own round because his biography is unusually full of trivia: a birthplace that is not the town he is associated with, a college he walked out of, and a draft that happened a year before he was eligible to play.
If you only use part of this page, use this round. It is the section that rewards a room that actually knows the sport rather than one that has seen the highlights.
Q1.Which Hall of Fame point guard led the Lakers to five NBA championships between 1980 and 1988, and started a Finals game at centre as a rookie?Tap to reveal
Answer: Magic Johnson
Born Earvin Johnson Jr. Titles in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988. As a rookie he started Game 6 of the 1980 Finals at centre in place of the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and scored 42 points. He retired in 1991 after his HIV diagnosis, then returned for the 1992 Olympic team.
Q2.Which player co-captained the 1960 Olympic gold-medal team and then joined the Cincinnati Royals?Tap to reveal
Answer: Oscar Robertson
"The Big O" averaged a triple-double across the whole of the 1961-62 season — 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, 11.4 assists. His 181 career triple-doubles stood as the record until Russell Westbrook passed it in 2021, and the antitrust suit he brought as head of the players' union opened the door to free agency.
Q3.Which Hall of Famer, inducted in 1982, won two championships with the Knicks and later became a US senator and a presidential candidate?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bill Bradley
Princeton, then a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, then Olympic gold in 1964 and Knicks titles in 1970 and 1973. He represented New Jersey in the Senate from 1979 to 1997 and ran for the Democratic nomination in 2000. New York retired his number 24.
Q4.Which centre, nicknamed "The Chief", won three championships with the Celtics alongside Larry Bird and Kevin McHale?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robert Parish
The nickname came from teammate Cedric Maxwell, after the silent Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Parish played 21 seasons and 1,611 games, won in Boston in 1981, 1984 and 1986, and added a fourth ring with Chicago in 1997 at the age of 43.
Q5.Larry Bird grew up in French Lick, Indiana. In which neighbouring town was he actually born?Tap to reveal
Answer: West Baden Springs
Born there on 7 December 1956, a mile or so up the road from French Lick, which is the town the "Hick from French Lick" nickname came from. Almost every quiz gets this one wrong.
Q6.Which Indiana high school did Larry Bird attend?Tap to reveal
Answer: Springs Valley High School
The school serves both French Lick and West Baden Springs; he graduated in 1974. He then enrolled at Indiana University, left within weeks, spent a year at home working for the local council, and started again at Indiana State.
Q7.Which team drafted Larry Bird sixth overall in 1978, a full year before he finished college?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Boston Celtics
A rule of the time allowed teams to draft players whose original class had graduated, then hold their rights. Boston waited a year while he led Indiana State to the 1979 title game, then signed him for a reported $650,000 a season — the richest rookie deal in the league at that point.
Q8.In which year was Larry Bird named NBA Rookie of the Year?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1980
Boston had gone 29-53 the season before he arrived and went 61-21 with him — a 32-game improvement that was a league record at the time.
Q9.How many seasons did Larry Bird play for the Boston Celtics?Tap to reveal
Answer: 13
Thirteen, every one of them in Boston, through to 1991-92. Three championships came out of it: 1981, 1984 and 1986.
Q10.How many times was Larry Bird selected as an NBA All-Star?Tap to reveal
Answer: 12
Every year from 1980 to 1988, then 1990 to 1992; a back injury cost him the 1989 selection. He also won three consecutive MVP awards, in 1984, 1985 and 1986.
Q11.Larry Bird finished his career with an Olympic gold medal on the 1992 Dream Team. In which city were those Games?Tap to reveal
Answer: Barcelona
Alongside Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. He played the tournament with the back problem that ended his career weeks later, and announced his retirement that August.
Round 5: college roots (hard)
The hardest round on the page, and the one that separates people who follow the draft from people who follow the league. Big-name players from small programmes are the theme: a Division II centre who went undrafted, a team manager who grew half a foot and left as a first-round pick, and a Most Improved Player who had to transfer to get noticed.
Read the player's name and give the room the state if they are struggling — it narrows the field enough to be fair without giving it away.
Q1.Ben Wallace started out at a junior college in Ohio. Which Division II school did he finish his college career at?Tap to reveal
Answer: Virginia Union
Two years at Cuyahoga Community College first, then Virginia Union — a Division II programme that also produced Charles Oakley. Wallace went undrafted in 1996, then won Defensive Player of the Year four times, and in 2021 became the first undrafted player of the modern era elected to the Hall of Fame.
Q2.Where did Scottie Pippen play college basketball?Tap to reveal
Answer: Central Arkansas
He arrived as the team manager and a walk-on, grew several inches during his college years, and left as the fifth overall pick of the 1987 draft. Seattle selected him and traded him to Chicago that night for Olden Polynice.
Q3.Wally Szczerbiak, who spent much of his childhood in Europe, played college basketball at which university?Tap to reveal
Answer: Miami University in Ohio
He scored 43 points against Washington in the first round of the 1999 NCAA tournament and took tenth-seeded Miami to the Sweet 16. His father Walt played professionally in Spain and won European Cups with Real Madrid; Minnesota took Wally sixth overall.
Q4.Danny Granger transferred out of Bradley after two seasons. Where did he finish his college career?Tap to reveal
Answer: New Mexico
Indiana took him 17th overall in the 2005 draft. He was named Most Improved Player and made his only All-Star team in 2009.
Q5.Brad Miller played at which Big Ten university?Tap to reveal
Answer: Purdue
He went undrafted in 1998 and signed with Charlotte as a free agent — an unusually good outcome for an undrafted centre, as he became an All-Star twice, with Indiana in 2003 and Sacramento in 2004.
Q6.Eddie Jones played college basketball at which school?Tap to reveal
Answer: Temple
He played for John Chaney's Temple teams and was taken tenth overall by the Lakers in the 1994 draft. He made three All-Star teams and spent his best years in Charlotte and Miami.
Q7.Where did Jason Kidd go to college?Tap to reveal
Answer: The University of California, Berkeley
Two seasons at Cal, then second overall to Dallas in the 1994 draft, behind Glenn Robinson. He shared Rookie of the Year with Grant Hill in 1995, and won his only championship back in Dallas in 2011.
Q8.Jason Williams, nicknamed "White Chocolate", finished college at Florida. Which school did he play for first?Tap to reveal
Answer: Marshall
He followed his coach: Billy Donovan left Marshall for Florida in 1996 and Williams transferred to Gainesville after him. Sacramento drafted him seventh overall in 1998, and he won a championship with Miami in 2006.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many NBA trivia questions are on this page?
57, split into five rounds that get harder as you go: modern superstars, records and physical extremes, MVP and Finals MVP winners, Hall of Fame names with a round on Larry Bird, and a closing round on where the players went to college.
Which eras of NBA history do these questions cover?
From Bob Pettit and Wilt Chamberlain in the late 1950s and early 1960s through to the mid-2000s teams of Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. That range is deliberate: it is the period whose facts have settled, so the answers do not change from one season to the next.
Are the answers still correct? Basketball records keep moving.
That is exactly why we cut several questions before publishing. "Who is the NBA's all-time leading scorer" was true of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for 39 years and stopped being true in February 2023, when LeBron James passed 38,387 points. "Youngest player to reach 10,000 points" was Kobe Bryant until James took it in 2008. Robert Parish held the record for games played until James passed 1,611 as well. Where a record still stands — Chamberlain's 100 points, his 55 rebounds, Jordan's 30.1 career average — we say so and show the number.
How should I run an NBA trivia round?
Open with round one and read it fast, no writing — draft questions and nicknames let almost everyone score, and a room that gets nothing right in the first five minutes stops playing. Save the 1970s Finals MVPs and the college round for the end and let teams confer on those. Ten to twelve questions a round is about right; 57 questions will fill an evening with breaks.
What is the hardest question here?
Probably Ben Wallace's college. Virginia Union is a Division II school in Richmond, and a four-time Defensive Player of the Year who went undrafted out of it is the kind of fact only draft followers carry. The 1976 Finals MVP, Jo Jo White, is the other one that usually empties a room.
Where can I find more free basketball and sports trivia?
Trivio.NET has free instant quizzes in its Sports and Personalities categories, plus a broader basketball set covering rules, franchises and the college and Olympic game. Every question on this page is free to copy into your own quiz night or print out.
