Five tips for crushing the Facebook Basketball game

By Derek Baker, March 29 2016 —

One of the fiercest basketball competitions is currently gripping the world’s attention. No, it’s not March Madness — it’s the Facebook Messenger basketball game. Send a basketball emoji over Messenger to a friend or group chat and you’ll be glued to your phone for the next few days. Since getting the high score brings infinite bragging rights, here are a few tips to help you assert your dominance and claim the top spot.

Use a ruler: You may have seen videos of people using a ruler to perfectly line up their shots. This is incorrect. A much more effective utilization of a ruler is to slap other player’s hands just as they’re about to set a new record. You may lose a couple of friendships, but your score will remain undefeated.

Get smashed: This game is similar enough to beer pong in that alcohol can only improve your aim — we all know how much better you get at beer pong after you knock back a few. The next time you’re out for a wild night, launch the app and watch your score increase with your blood alcohol content. You’ll be on your phone the whole night anyways.

Pursue a computer science degree: Consider devoting four years of your life to a degree in computer science in order to obtain the skills needed to code a program that allows you to hack into Facebook and manually set your score to whatever you see fit.

Bribery: If you’re financially capable, consider sending Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg a large sum of money in return for some fudging of the numbers in your group chat. However, take note that Zuckerberg’s net worth is over $46 billion, so slipping him a cool, crisp hundred may not cut it.

Get good: Listen kid. You don’t score over 30 by playing casually for a few minutes between class. Like all sports, it takes diligence and commitment to improve. A complex weekly schedule of practice time, recovery periods and a healthy diet is required to have any chance of making it to the big leagues. Just uninstall now.