Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

At any given time, the playgrounds of the world are full of people playing basketball. They’re playing one-on-one, two-on-two, and five-on-five, so it’s natural to ask: how many players are on a basketball team?

How Many Players on a Basketball Team?

While informal or pickup games can feature teams of almost any size, in official games, both basketball teams play five players at a time. Most teams will have a larger overall roster and make frequent substitutions to the five players on the floor.

How many players on a basketball roster varies by league, but it generally tends to be between 12-15 players. For example, the NBA has 15-man rosters, but Eurobasket features only 12 players per team.

Most American high schools tend to feature 12-player varsity rosters, though they often may field junior varsity or freshmen teams as well. This allows for changes to the roster between games in the case of injury or loss of availability.

Why Are There Five Players on a Basketball Team?

It’s reasonable to wonder what professional basketball would look like if it was played four-on-four, seven-on-seven, or even ten-on-ten. So why is basketball played with five players per team?

The original rules of basketball, as written by Dr. James Naismith in 1892, do not specify how many players there are per side. In fact, when Dr. Naismith’s gym classes first played the game, they used nine per side.

Was there some profound philosophical reason that Naismith chose nine-player teams? No, his class had 18 people in it, so it just worked out that way.

Despite that somewhat random origin, the nine-on-nine format was still being used in the earliest professional and college basketball leagues. Scores for those games tended to be in the single digits, though – a far cry from the triple-digit affairs of the modern NBA.

Having fewer players per side opened up the court and allowed for more free-flowing action and easier scoring. This, in turn, made for a more exciting product and paved the way for the game’s rapid expansion. 

What are the Positions on a Basketball Team?

Traditional games feature two guards, two forwards, and a center, making five players on a basketball team at any given time. In roughest terms, the center plays closest to the basket, with the guards furthest out and the forwards in between.

The guards-forwards-center configuration is relatively common across most leagues, but it can also change based on the team, the coach, and the strategy being used. Teams are free to tinker with deploying their players in any number of ways, as long as they’re only using five at a time.

How Many Players on a Fantasy Basketball Team?

The number of players on a fantasy basketball team is similar to that of a standard team, with the main difference being that you start ten players each week.  That gives you three bench players to swap in and out throughout the season.

Check out these fantasy basketball team names for some funny ideas to liven-up your league.

Changing the Size of a Basketball Team

While five-player teams are by far the dominant form of the sport, that doesn’t mean it is the only one. There are one-on-one, two-on-two, and three-on-three tournaments that are played everywhere across the globe.

There’s even a semi-professional league called BIG3 that features three-player teams. While BIG3 may never take over the NBA as the top international league, its very existence proves that basketball can be played with any number of players.

Heck, you can pick up a ball and step outside by yourself right now. Just because there are five players per side on an NBA team doesn’t mean you can’t go shoot some hoops any time you’ve got the Jones.