NBA Connections: How to Play the Daily NBA Grid Game
A basketball spin on the viral NYT Connections format — sort 16 NBA names into four hidden groups of four. Here's how it works, and how to play our own version right now.
NBA Connections takes the format that made the New York Times' Connections a daily habit for millions and rebuilds it entirely around basketball. Instead of random words, you get 16 NBA names — players, sometimes teams — and the job is the same: find the four hidden groups of four before you run out of guesses.
Sixteen names, four hidden categories, one shot to sort them all correctly.
We built our own NBA Connections-style puzzle right on the homepage — no sign-up, no app. Play today's Daily Grid.
How NBA Connections Works
Fan-made versions like airball.gg's NBA Connections pull categories from across basketball history and stats — shared franchises ("Played for the Celtics"), draft classes ("Drafted in 1998"), awards ("Won Defensive Player of the Year"), colleges ("Played at Kansas"), and career milestones ("Scored 20,000+ career points"). Each category is color-coded by difficulty, from straightforward (yellow) to genuinely tricky overlaps (purple) — the same difficulty ramp NYT uses in the original.
Our Daily Grid: An NBA Connections You Can Play Here
Rather than just explain the format, we built it. Our Daily Grid game — right on the NBA GRID homepage — uses the exact same mechanics:
- 16 items, 4 hidden categories — mixed together, no grouping shown up front.
- Select 4, then submit — a correct guess locks in and reveals the category name and color.
- 4 mistakes allowed — miss a fifth time and the puzzle ends.
- Shuffle anytime — rearrange the remaining tiles if the layout is throwing you off.
Strategy Tips
- Start with your most confident group — lock in guaranteed points before touching anything uncertain.
- Watch for players who fit more than one category — the hardest (purple) group is usually built from overlap traps designed to bait a wrong guess elsewhere.
- Save the trickiest group for last — by then it's often the only names left, solving itself by elimination.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NBA Connections?
A basketball version of the NYT Connections format: a 4x4 grid of 16 NBA names hiding four groups of four that share something in common.
Is there an official NBA Connections game?
The New York Times doesn't run an NBA-specific edition, though The Athletic has a general Sports Connections. Fan-made NBA versions use the same format with basketball-only categories.
How do you play NBA Connections?
Select four names you think share a category and submit. Correct groups lock in; incorrect ones cost a mistake. Solve all four groups before running out of mistakes.
