This Episode Is About Basketball

Throw balls into your team's basket to weigh it down. When it touches the buzzer, you're safe! Last team to do it loses.

This Episode Is About Basketball is the 9th episode of Battle for BFDI and the 40th episode overall of the Battle for Dream Island series. It was released on April 6, 2018.

Cold Open
Marker asks Stapy to play "Eat the Dirt" with him. Stapy instantly agrees, but after realizing what Marker said, he backs out and decides not to play.

Coiny enters the scene and serves Marker dirt cake on a plate, which causes the intro to start because he raised his hand like what Four and others did.

Before Cake at Stake
Clock is ticking when suddenly he rings like he has done in the previous episode. Dora follows along with by saying "Da" repeatedly.

Donut groans at the sound of this and covers his ears. Stapy proceeds to ask Donut if it meant it was time for Cake at Stake, but Donut interrupts him rudely, finishing his sentence.

Cake at Stake
While Donut is hosting Cake at Stake, Gelatin and Lightning are attempting to steal the 'swollen fries' that Gelatin saw in Fries at the beginning of "Questions Answered", Donut then notices Gelatin, and he panics.

Gelatin bites the yellowed fries but they scream. They turn out to be X. X tells them that he ran away when he and Four were being multiplied by zero (Donut). He hid in various places, like under the basket that used in "Four Goes Too Far" and the jawbreaker fragment Ruby was playing with in "The Liar Ball You Don't Want".

Upon seeing that X was present, Donut gives X the responsibility of doing Cake at Stake. However, X reads the votes backwards, saying that Stapy was eliminated first. Stapy asks Puffball to make sure Foldy and Bell get their cakes, and he leaves. X then realizes he read the votes backwards, and Eraser believes this is an April Fools joke, but X says that he didn't mean to read them that way.

Puffball then breaks Stapy's promise and eats Foldy and Bell's cakes. Nickel asks Puffball to save some for him, and thanks her when she spits cake out.

The Challenge
Donut is about to announce the ninth contest when suddenly X interrupts him and asks if he could choose the contest. Donut agrees, but then X experiences difficulties when coming up with the challenge. When he looks around and sees baskets and balls, he decides that the challenge should be Basketball. Barf Bag asks X if he could clarify what the challenge actually is, and then X says the challenge was to press the team buzzers used in the previous episode by weighing down the baskets.

Blocky throws Basketball and Tennis Ball in the basket to weigh it down and lower it, just like Tennis Ball's trebuchet did in "Getting Teardrop to Talk", causing to be safe. X looks upon this questionably but accepts it after Blocky explains that he did throw "balls" into the basket.

Meanwhile, doesn't have any luck throwing the balls. Gaty wishes that there was someone who specialized in throwing.

Firey throws a ball, only to drop it. Coiny picks it up and throws it. He misses and hits Cloudy's window again.

Woody attempts to throw a ball but is too scared to do so. Nickel says that his team should give up. Cloudy tries to convince David to throw since he and Woody are the only ones on with arms.

Yellow Face tells Marker to play "Toss the Balls." Marker agrees then digs a hole while throwing balls into the basket, weighing it down and pressing the buzzer. This causes to be safe.

Meanwhile, Gelatin is about to tell his team they should use Bomby so that the balls would go into the basket, but then they all look at him, making Gelatin nervous and saying Bomby should throw the balls into the basket. Donut sarcastically agrees but Barf Bag pointed out that Gelatin was correct.

Snowball throws a ball at the propeller of 's basket, making it malfunction and dropping onto the buzzer. X gets suspicious, but he becomes scared when Snowball gets angry. This makes safe.

Meanwhile, is telling Tree to throw, even though he's stuck inside Bottle. Pie tells her team they're forgetting something. Pen then throws a bunch of balls into Black Hole.

X announces that, , and are safe, leaving it to  and. Cloudy encourages Woody to throw, which he does. But then throws a bunch of balls into the basket, causing them to be safe. Nickel asks if they were supposed to throw more than one ball. X says that he should pay more attention, but Nickel says that X wasn't very clear.

Voting
The normal voting card shows up smaller due to the lack of players on 's team, only the music is playing until Donut reminding X to say the voting lines. X then continues to say it and asks if it was good, and Donut proceeds to assure him that it was.

Stinger
Donut walks past X, telling him that he did a “good job” with hosting the contest. X then puts on a tiny smile on his face, looking at his hand.

Votes
22340 votes were cast.

Rankings

 * 1st:
 * 2nd:
 * 3rd:
 * 4th:
 * 5th:
 * 6th:
 * 7th:
 * 8th: (lost)

Credits

 * Writing: Satomi Hinatsu, Kenzie Bryant
 * Animation: Satomi Hinatsu, Kenzie Bryant, Caedmon Johnson
 * Editing: Satomi Hinatsu
 * Audio Editing: Satomi Hinatsu, Amor Boretto, Maroue Reus
 * Music: Michael Huang
 * Additional Character Art: TopHatTheHat, TheEpicJames

Voice Acting
Contestants that are currently dead/eliminated are not present.

Trivia

 * Before the official thumbnail was released, the original thumbnail features the second most contestants, after Four Goes Too Far.
 * The credits for this episode were unique in these ways:
 * This is Kenzie Bryant's first animation credit.
 * The credits now have new "Audio" and "Editing" sections.
 * This is the third episode not written by Cary Huang.
 * This is the second episode written by Kenzie Bryant.
 * This is the first episode to be written by Satomi Hinatsu, but not Cary or Michael Huang.
 * This is the first episode not animated by Michael Huang.
 * This is the first episode where neither of the Huang Twins had any involvement in outside of the music and voice acting.
 * This is the first time a contestant has been eliminated before announcing all the votes.
 * Similar to BFDI schedule, this episode came out a month after the previous episode.
 * This is the first episode in BFB so far that was released 4 weeks after the last episode.
 * For the first time, Cary Huang says 's name, making him the 3rd voice actor to do so.
 * Michael (As Four, Blocky, and Book) and Satomi (As Saw and Basketball) are the two to have said this before Cary.
 * Coiny raises his hand in this episode to start the intro.
 * This is the first time in BFB that a team has lost three times, in this case being.
 * This is the fifth episode to have a character's name in the title, following Are You Smarter Than a Snowball?, Getting Teardrop to Talk, Fortunate Ben, and Four Goes Too Far.
 * However, it wasn't literally about Basketball. It was about X's baskets and balls, being the first episode in this category to not literally be named after that contestant.
 * This is the shortest BFB episode so far, clocking in at 7 minutes.
 * The shortest before this was "Lick Your Way to Freedom".
 * This is also the first BFB episode to be under 10 minutes.
 * This episode is both the shortest video and the video that took the most time to create.
 * TopHatTheHat & TheEpicJames came back for the Additional character art.
 * This is the final episode of this season with a single digit episode number.
 * This makes BFB the second season to pass single digit episode numbers. The first being Battle for Dream Island.
 * Foldy is the only remaining BFDI APPISIOTE 225555555!!!!! contestant and the only newbie still on the show now.
 * This episode is the 5th episode in a row to have a thumbnail that does not feature contestants from the losing team.
 * Balloony, Remote, Taco, Naily, Bell, Foldy and 8-Ball are currently dead, and it is unknown if, when, or how they will come back either.​ Balloony may not be orange anymore if he is recovered.
 * None of the dead contestants was revived during this episode.
 * 's first elimination is similar to 's.
 * Both have the only original contestants that were in the Squishy Cherries and never competed in BFDIA.
 * Every contestant also received over 1,000 votes. This is the second time this happened as every member of Death P.A.C.T got over 1,000 votes in "Fortunate Ben"
 * Alike to BFB 5's elimination, it marks the elimination of a newbie.
 * In this episode, X returns and takes over as the host, replacing Donut.
 * Four is still not present, however, Marker may have the ability to revive Four due to what he did in Today's Very Special Episode.
 * The music of the intro can be heard during Death P.A.C.T's scene throwing their balls.
 * This is the first time that the track can be heard in any portion rather than the intro in any episode.
 * This is the first time The Moon is visible during the day.
 * This is the third time is up for elimination.
 * This is the fourth time in a row a male is eliminated.
 * This is the first time places 1st.
 * Blocky's colors in the thumbnail look like the colors used in his first body asset.
 * Though, this could be just a coincidence.
 * This is the second time an episode had the word "episode" in it, following Today's Very Special Episode
 * This is the first time where Stapy uses another mode to move other than leaping, which is flipping his top part and then his bottom part.
 * This is the first episode of BFB where Golf Ball has no lines.
 * This means that the only contestants that have spoken in every episode up to BFB 9 are Donut, Pen, and Book.
 * This is the second time someone is eliminated but isn't forced somewhere, the first being Roboty in "Four Goes Too Far".
 * The sound used when Donut picked up X and placed him as the host was the same as the Windows XP balloon sound.
 * This is the first episode since Lick Your Way to Freedom where Lollipop hasn’t had a speaking role.
 * When Woody propels the ball he does a unnoticeable dab which is evident by the captions during the video.
 * This is the first episode where Swappy is not recommended.
 * The recommended character replacing him, Randomizer, got a shoutout, as well as his recommender, from Cary.

Continuity references

 * Before the elimination at the beginning of the episode, when Dora was saying "da, da, da, da" in sync with "tick, tock, tick, tock" before the Cake at Stake starts, is a reference to Questions Answered.
 * Firey can't throw a ball to the basket similar to Getting Teardrop to Talk where Firey can't throw the blueberry seeds.
 * This is also similar to that episode, when Snowball accidentally throws blueberry seeds at Cloudy's window, breaking it.
 * Marker tossed the dirt after tossing the balls into the basket.
 * When tossing the dirt he digs into a hole, and Fries tells him he can stop now. This is possibly a reference to Get Digging where Fries tells the contestants who are all digging deep holes that they could stop.
 * Coiny has a dirt cake, which is from BFDI 4. He offers Marker to eat it.
 * Gaty wished there was someone who specialized in throwing. She could be referring to Taco. If that's the case, it could be referencing how Taco made a throw to Cloudy's pot in Getting Teardrop to Talk.
 * Nickel says that his team should give up, possibly referencing him saying the same thing in No More Snow.
 * Woody hesitates to throw a ball while members on his team encourages him to just like on Total Firey Island/Book 4: Elimination Volleyball!.
 * This time, he gets determined to throw it, however.
 * When Coiny's ball breaks Cloudy's window again, Pin's blueberry seeds from Getting Teardrop to Talk can be seen breaking out of its pot as a bush.
 * Changes to characters from past episodes are still present:
 * Bomby is still half-exploded since Why Would You Do This on a Swingset.
 * Cloudy is still taped from Fortunate Ben.
 * Saw is still missing her handle since Getting Teardrop to Talk.
 * The members of (except Balloony) are still orange since Four Goes Too Far.
 * Woody is still dented since The Liar Ball You Don't Want.
 * Tree and a fortune cookie are still in Bottle since Fortunate Ben and The Liar Ball You Don't Want.
 * Remote, Balloony, Bell, Naily, Taco, and Foldy are still dead since The Liar Ball You Don't Want


 * Blocky using balls to weigh down X's baskets is a reference when used them to weigh down X's basket in Getting Teardrop to Talk.

Goofs/Errors

 * X appears to have shrunken to a smaller size compared to previous episodes, even appearing much smaller than Blocky.
 * It is unknown whether this is intentional or not.
 * Book and Puffball's voices seem to be lower-pitched than in previous episodes.
 * However, since Puffball "sings", it could be that her voice is on a lower octave.
 * X turns black and white and compresses himself in a brief frame at 3:26 to 3:27.
 * This could be an exit of screen effect.
 * This could also be intentional, similarly to Four's "glitches" in BFB 1.
 * Clock's hour hand is layered over his eye.
 * At 6:05, an obscure part of one of Pen's eyes isn't colored.
 * At 1:35, Ruby's arms are missing.
 * Around 6:28 to 6:29, X's mouth turns gray.
 * At 2:00, X's eyes flash yellow for one frame.
 * At 3:36, the injured side of Bomby's body is opposite the side with his fuse when he appears in the bottom right corner. However, the bandages and fuse are on the same side of his body at 5:06.
 * Choo Choo the Train wasn't hit with a ball when the recommended characters were shown.

Controversy
Some people criticized this episode for being too short despite a 4-week release and are mad that lost again for the third time, similar to Fortunate Ben[citation needed].