Basketball Shootout

Flick clean jump shots at a hoop that is only 10.85 cm wider than the ball on either side. Real rim, backboard and swish physics, five modes, and a daily twenty-five that is the same for everyone.

Mode

Twenty shots, cycling through all five spots. No clock, no pressure.

No Free Shoot session recorded yet.

Free Shoot — press Start when you are ready.

Arc: 50°
Power: 50%
Guide: on

Drag on the pad to set the arc and the power, or use the arrow keys. Space shoots. Aim higher than feels natural — below about 35° of descent the ball cannot fit through cleanly.

The thing that surprises everybody

A flat shot cannot go in. The hoop is 45.7 cm across and the ball is 24 cm, which leaves 10.85 cm of room either side of the middle — less than half a ball. Arrive at a shallow angle and the ball simply will not fit through that gap: it clips the near rim on the way in. Below about 35 degrees of descent it is geometrically impossible, however perfectly the shot is aimed.

So if you are missing a lot, the answer is almost always to aim higher. The line above the court tells you the minimum arc for the spot you are shooting from, and says so plainly before you shoot when the arc you have set cannot go in at all.

How to play

Press Start, then drag on the pad below the court. The direction you drag sets the arc and how far you drag sets the power; let go to shoot. The readout shows both as numbers, so you can repeat a shot that worked.

On a keyboard, ↑ and ↓ change the arc, ← and → change the power, and Space shoots. Nothing in the game needs a pointer.

The aim guide draws the arc your current flick would take, up to the first thing it would hit. It is on in the practice modes and off in the competitive ones, and the panel says so when the mode has overruled your setting.

Scoring

Two points from close in, the free-throw area and mid-range; three from beyond the arc and from deep. A shot that goes through without touching anything is worth one more, because threading 10.85 cm is genuinely harder than a make that rattles in.

A shot counts only when the whole ball crosses the hoop plane going downward — a ball that comes back up through the ring off the underside of the rim has not scored. Each shot can score at most once.

The rim is not decoration. Measured over 300,000 aimed shots, about 84% touch it and roughly 45% of all makes went in off it.

Where you shoot from

Close: — 2.4 m from the hoop, 2 points
Free throw: — 4.2 m from the hoop, 2 points
Mid-range: — 5.4 m from the hoop, 2 points
Beyond the arc: — 6.75 m from the hoop, 3 points
Deep: — 8.2 m from the hoop, 3 points

The hoop is 3.05 m up and the distances are measured from directly beneath it, so the free-throw spot sits where a real free throw does.

Modes

Free Shoot: — twenty shots, all five spots, no clock
60-second Shootout: — sixty seconds from the three middle spots; take as many as you can line up
Around the Arc: — five shots from each spot, working outwards
Trick-shot targets: — the backboard is the only way in — a clean direct shot scores nothing
Daily 25: — twenty-five shots, the same for everybody, every UTC day

Each mode keeps its own best, and they are deliberately not pooled: one is bound by a clock, one forces the distances and one refuses most of the shots the others reward, so a single number across all five would tell you that you had got worse when you had only changed mode.

Tips

Aim higher than feels natural. Nearly every miss that feels unfair is a shot that arrived too flat to fit through.
Power and arc are not independent — a steeper shot needs more of it to reach the same distance. The readout gives you both numbers so you can change one at a time.
The backboard is a friend from close in and mid-range, and almost useless from deep, where the angle sends the ball long.
In the sixty-second mode, a quick shot from the free-throw spot beats a careful one from deep: the clock costs more than the extra point pays.

Privacy and local play

Everything runs in your browser. Your bests, your daily history and your settings are kept in this browser's local storage and are never sent anywhere — there is no account, no server and no leaderboard. The shots are simulated on your own device and the sounds are synthesised there too; nothing is downloaded. The button under the controls deletes this game's stored data and touches nothing else on Zerdly.

Frequently asked questions

My shot went straight at the hoop and still missed. Why?: Almost always because it was too flat. The hoop is 45.7 cm across and the ball is 24 cm, so the ball's centre has to pass within 10.85 cm of the middle — less than half a ball width. Come down at a shallow angle and the ball clips the near rim on the way in no matter how well it is aimed: below about 35 degrees of descent it is geometrically impossible to pass through. That is why coaches talk about arc. The line above the court tells you the minimum for the spot you are on, and warns you before you shoot if the arc you have set cannot go in at all.
Are the rim bounces real, or is it a coin flip dressed up?: They are real. The ball, the rim edges, the backboard and the floor are all simulated in metres and seconds, and a bounce is computed from where on the rim the ball struck and how fast it was moving — the normal and the tangential parts of the impact are handled separately, which is why a ball can spin off sideways rather than straight back. Nothing is decided in advance and there is no hidden make-or-miss roll.
How often does the rim get involved?: More than most people expect. Measured over 300,000 aimed shots: about 84% touch the rim at some point, and roughly 45% of everything that goes in went in off it. The rim is not a penalty for a bad shot — it is the normal case, and playing it deliberately off the back of the ring is a real technique.
Does the game run the same on a slow phone or a 120 Hz screen?: Yes. The shot is fully resolved the moment you release it, at a fixed 120 steps a second, and what you watch afterwards is a replay of that. A dropped frame makes the flight look less smooth and cannot change what the scoreboard says. The collisions are swept rather than sampled: measured at 60 Hz, a simple per-step overlap test misses about one rim contact in 41 — the ball passes straight through solid metal — and running the physics faster shrinks that without ever removing it.
Can a ball score on the way up?: No, and that rule is enforced rather than assumed. A shot only counts when the whole ball crosses the hoop plane going downward. On a plain arc a ball cannot come up through the hoop at all, so the rule looks redundant — but a ball that has bounced off the underside of the rim or off the floor certainly can, and that is what it is there for.
In Trick-shot targets my shot went in and scored nothing.: That is the mode, not a fault. In Trick-shot targets the ball has to touch the backboard on the way in; a clean direct shot scores zero. It is called out in words when it happens rather than shown as a miss, and the summary counts those separately, so the number of shots that went through the hoop is always visible next to the number that scored.
Is the Daily the same for everyone?: Yes. Daily 25 is seeded from the UTC date, so every player gets the same twenty-five spots on the same day, and it is recorded once. Everything else is randomly seeded on your device.
Why is there no leaderboard?: There is no server and no account, so there is nobody to compare you with. Your bests, your daily history and your settings live in this browser and nowhere else, and the button under the controls deletes all of them without touching anything else on Zerdly.