Have you heard the expressions "shooting fish in a barrel" or
"taking candy from a baby" ?
I've decided to take your points and try not to feel guilty about it.
A). That's it ! That's the equation, for ANY basketball on Earth.Â
You wrote it right there in your question.
In that equation that you wrote, the ' r ' is the initial velocity.Â
You said that Adam tossed it straight up, and it was going 10 meters per second
  when it left his hand.Â
So ' r ' in the equation is +10.
The equation is:
               d = 10t - 5t²  .
It tells you how high the ball is above its tossing height after any number of seconds.
The ' t ' in the equation is the number of seconds. Any letter could have been used,
but ' t ' was cleverly selected because it stands for 'time'.
B). You want to know where it is after 0.5 second ?  All you have to do is put '0.5'
into the equation wherever there's a ' t '. Do you really need somebody to do that
for you ?
Well, OK. You're being so overly generous with your points . . .
     Distance = 10 t - 5 t²
     Distance = 10 (0.5) - 5 (0.5)²
     Distance =   5    - 5(0.25)
     Distance =   5    - 1.25
     Distance =     3.75 meters
                positive 3.75 means above Adam's hand.Â
A thinking exercise:
-- He tossed the ball upwards at 10 meters per second.
-- Why is it not 5 meters above his hands after 0.5 second?
