How to Play

Build a nine-attribute scorer out of nine different NBA players, then find out how many points he drops in his best game.

The loop

  1. The reels spin and land on an NBA team and one player from that team.
  2. You see his letter grade for every attribute you haven't filled yet.
  3. You steal one. That slot locks permanently, and that player is done.
  4. Repeat until all nine slots are full.
  5. Your finished player plays one game. That score is your run.

A team never repeats within a run, so you'll see nine different franchises. The player is locked as a specific stint, not as a person — stealing from Warriors Durant leaves Suns Durant available later, and they carry different grades.

The nine attributes

AttributeWhat it drives
FinishingConverting at the rim — layups, dunks, contact finishes.
MidrangePull-ups, turnarounds, fades and everything inside the arc away from the rim.
3PT ShootingAccuracy and range from three, weighted by whether he actually took them.
Free ThrowsFree-throw accuracy only. Worthless alone, decisive next to Foul Drawing.
HandleBall security at extreme usage. Turnovers cost you possessions you'd have scored on.
Shot CreationManufacturing a good look against a defense that knows you're shooting.
Foul DrawingGetting to the line. Free points, if you can make them.
VolumeHow relentlessly he hunts shots. Efficiency without volume never threatens 100.
Stamina / MotorSustaining that load for 40+ minutes without a fourth-quarter collapse.

Why Volume matters more than it looks

An efficient scorer is not automatically a 100-point scorer. A build with elite shooting and weak Volume produces a beautiful, useless 48 points on 22 shots. You cannot reach 100 without someone who refuses to stop shooting.

The grade ladder

Fourteen rungs, F through S. Grades are relative to every other scorer in the pool, not to an average NBA player — so a C here still means a real NBA scorer.

GradeMeaning
SGenerational. Reserved for historic traits and deliberately rare — most superstars never get one.
A+ / A / A−Elite. A clear star-level scoring tool.
B+ / B / B−Good to very good. Reliable, not an advantage.
C+ / C / C−Average for an NBA scorer. Not a weapon.
D+ / D / D− / FA hole. Actively damaging in a 100-point attempt.

Rerolls

You get exactly two per run, and they do different things:

Spending them early is tempting and usually wrong. The value of a reroll rises as your open slots shrink, because a bad spin with two slots left is far more damaging than a bad spin with nine. In simulation, using rerolls well more than doubles your chance of a perfect run.

How the final score is simulated

Your nine grades are not averaged. The game plays out a single scoring performance quarter by quarter: Volume and Shot Creation decide how many attempts you generate, Handle decides how many possessions survive, your three shooting grades decide where those shots come from and how many drop, Foul Drawing generates trips to the line and Free Throws converts them, and Stamina decides how much of it holds up in the fourth.

Weaknesses hurt more than a simple average implies, and the interactions are where runs are won and lost:

There's a small amount of game-to-game variance, so the same build won't always produce the same number. Anything above 100 is displayed as 100.

Score tiers

ScoreTier
100100-POINT SCORER
92–99So close
83–91Historic
72–82All-time night
60–71Monster game
45–59Bucket getter
0–44Not enough firepower

A typical run lands in the 60s. Skilled play reaches 100 roughly once every 480 runs, so treat a 90 as a genuinely good night.

Daily 100

Everyone in the world gets the same nine spins each day, with one attempt. Spins are fixed in advance rather than drawn as you go, so two people who pick differently still face the same sequence. A fresh puzzle drops at midnight US Eastern, and your streak survives as long as you don't miss a day.

Play now How grades are built