Getty Trae Young and Chris Paul are two of the stars in the NBA Horse competition.
The NBA season may still be on pause, but the league organized an Easter alternative with a Horse competition as a way to provide fans with a little basketball as they wait. The winner will not earn any prize money, but State Farm is donating $200,000 to COVID-19 relief efforts, per NBA.com. The first round of the competition tips off at 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. The semifinals and championship matchups conclude on Thursday, April 16.
The participants will be a mix of current and former NBA-WNBA players. The following eight players will square off in the NBA HORSE Challenge: Chris Paul, Trae Young, Tamika Catchings, Zach LaVine, Allie Quigley, Mike Conley Jr., Chauncey Billups and Paul Pierce.
Where Is the NBA Horse Competition?
The NBA is still adhering to the country’s social distancing guidelines so all eight players will be participating at their own home court, and ESPN is expected to show feeds from each location. Here is a look at the first-round matchups.
| GROUP | PLAYER MATCHUPS |
| Group 1 | Trae Young vs. Chauncey Billups |
| Group 1 | Tamika Catchings vs. Mike Conley Jr. |
| Group 2 | Zach LaVine vs. Paul Pierce |
| Group 2 | Chris Paul vs. Allie Quigley |
Horse Rules
For those unfamiliar with Horse, it is a shooting game where a player has to hit the same shot as the person before them if the first shooter makes the basket. The second player can shoot whatever shot they want if the person before them misses.
For every miss after a make, the person gets a letter and a winner is declared after someone gets five H-O-R-S-E letters. The NBA has added a few rules including no dunking. Here is a breakdown of the house rules for the NBA Horse competition, per NBA.com.
A coin toss at the start of each game will determine who shoots first, with the more senior player calling heads or tails. Players must describe each shot attempt, specifying the type of score they intend to make before taking a shot, such as a bank shot or swish. Dunking is prohibited. The first player in each game to accumulate the letters “H-O-R-S-E” after failing to match five shots is eliminated.
NBA Horse Bracket
| ROUND 1 | ROUND 1 | |
| C. Billups | Z. LaVine | |
| T. Young | P. Pierce | |
| M. Conley Jr. | C. Paul | |
| T. Catchings | A. Quigley |
The NBA Will Not Make a Decision on the Current Season Until May
The NBA has yet to make an announcement on the plans for the remainder of the season since the league suspended play in March. NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently noted that the league will not make any plans on the future of the season until May, at the earliest.
“Essentially what I’ve told my folks over the last week is we should just accept that at least for the month of April, we won’t be in a position to make any decisions,” Silver said, per ESPN. “I don’t think that necessarily means that, on May 1, we will be [in that position], but at least I know that just to settle everyone down a little bit.”
The NBA is still discussing contingency plans internally on how to finish out the season. Silver admitted that staff members are throwing around various possibilities about how to resume play.
“It doesn’t mean that, internally, both the league and discussions with our players and the teams we aren’t looking at many different scenarios for restarting the season, but I think it honestly is just too early, given what’s happened right now, to even be able to project or predict where we will be in a few weeks,” Silver explained, per ESPN.