🧪 Basketball Trajectory with Drag & Magnus

This simulator integrates the real equations of motion for a basketball in flight — gravity, quadratic air drag, and the Magnus lift force produced by backspin — as a coupled ordinate differential equation, step by step, rather than drawing a pre-scripted arc. Set the release angle, speed and backspin rate and the ball's path bends and flattens exactly as the physics dictates: drag bleeds speed and steepens the descent, while backspin generates real lift that flattens the arc and extends range, the same mechanism real players rely on for a soft, forgiving shot. Adjust the hoop distance and watch the simulator determine swish, rim or miss directly from where the computed trajectory actually crosses the rim plane.