Hoop Grid is a 3×3 grid where every cell crosses a row with a column. The three rows are NBA teams; the columns are one more team, an award category, and a career-stat category. Tap a cell and search for a player who satisfies BOTH conditions — for a team-team cell that means someone who played for both franchises, for a team-award cell someone who played for that team and won that award at any point in their career. You get nine guesses total, and every guess counts whether it lands or bricks. Each player can only be used once per board. Fill six or more cells and the day is a win — but the real flex is the rarity score: every pick is scored against everyone playing today, so the deep-cut journeyman beats the obvious superstar every time. A pick nobody else made is a unicorn.
Hoop Grid is the airball.gg take on the grid-trivia format that took over NBA Twitter — the game where knowing a superstar's résumé matters less than remembering who played where. Every board is generated from the same verified player database that powers the rest of airball.gg, and every cell is guaranteed to have multiple valid answers, most of them names a regular fan can land on. Answers are checked against complete career data — every franchise stint, every award, every career total — so an obscure-but-correct answer always counts. The rarity score rewards exactly that: each pick is scored by the share of today's players who made the same one, so two people can both go 9-for-9 and still have something to argue about. The best grid of the day is filled with unicorns — and wears a rainbow on the leaderboard.
Does a wrong guess cost me a cell?
No — it costs a guess. You have nine guesses for nine cells, so every miss means one cell you can no longer fill. Perfect boards need perfect guessing.
Can I use the same player for two cells?
No. Once you've guessed a player — right or wrong — they're used for the day. Choosing where to spend a multi-fit player is most of the strategy.
How is the rarity score calculated?
Each filled cell scores the percentage of today's players who made the same pick — a pick 40% of people made costs 40, a pick nobody else made (a unicorn) costs almost nothing. Empty cells cost a flat 100. Lower is better, and the score settles as more people play through the day.
Do legacy teams count for their modern franchise?
Yes. Franchise lineage is preserved — Seattle SuperSonics answers count for Oklahoma City, New Jersey Nets for Brooklyn, Vancouver Grizzlies for Memphis, and so on.
What counts as a win?
Filling six or more of the nine cells. A full board is the bragging-rights tier, and an all-unicorn board — every pick one nobody else made — is the screenshot that ends the group chat.
Player stats, rosters, and career data reflect the most recently completed NBA season until the new season is underway.