Hardwood Basketball Manager

The whole basketball pyramid, running at once.

Coach a college program, run a pro front office, or live in both across one career. The college league, the pro league, and the development league sit on one connected calendar: the players you develop in college enter the pro draft, and the ones who miss the cut keep playing below it. Step away for a week, and the league keeps moving without you.

Three Leagues, One Pyramid

At the top is the NHA, the pro league: a full season, a playoff chase, and a salary cap that keeps rosters honest. Below it is the college league, governed by the CCC: 365 schools across 31 conferences. In between is the development league, feeding players back to the NHA through its own draft and a call-up market.

On the Court

Every game plays out on a 2D tactical visualizer: a top-down view of the court with defensive scheme labels, openness indicators, and shot annotations that show you why a possession worked. The Flux AI coach can run your tactics, substitutions, and timeouts, or you can take the controls yourself.

• Zone or man defense, pick-and-roll, post-ups, a floor general, double teams, pace control, crashing the boards, inbound pressure

• 28 player attributes across skill, scoring, rebounding, defense, physical, and mental, plus traits like Sniper, Lock, and Maestro

Building a Roster

Scouting is never a sure thing: ratings show up as star tiers, not hard numbers, and sharpen the more you scout a player. Prospects declare their draft stock, the league votes on combine invites, and the combine runs measurements, drills, and small-sided games that feed one board. Two pre-draft showcases, the Foundry and Hardwood Hype, let prospects climb that board, and missing the draft sends you to the development league. Build your roster from there through the draft, free agency, and trades, all under the cap.

The College Game

Take a college job and you're not a general manager, you're a head coach, answering to an Athletic Director instead of an owner. Recruiting is the real job: a season-long chase on a summer circuit, where prospects play actual games and raise or wreck their stock in front of you.

• Scholarships and a cash NIL budget with a split you set, chased through two signing windows, and oversigning means trimming a scholarship you already promised

• A four-year eligibility clock: graduate, leave early, or hit the transfer portal

• Conference play into Hardwood Havoc, a 64-team single-elimination tournament with a Selection Day, a bubble, and a champion

The Blue Blood Index tracks your program's all-time prestige.

Owners and Finances

Every team carries its own fan interest, driving local revenue, attendance, and gate money on playoff home games. Your owner injects cash or pulls it back, you set ticket-price policy each off-season, petition the board for help, and invest in facilities: arena, training, and medical tiers. The owner is a character, not a menu: you negotiate terms at a first meeting when hired, and an owner can be succeeded mid-career by someone new.

A League That Talks

The NHA runs a weekly Power Rankings, tracks clinches and eliminations in the standings, and covers the trade deadline, free agency, and career milestones. A mock draft evolves across the draft cycle off real draft stock and the standings order, grading the steals and reaches once the picks are in. The college league runs its own wire: a weekly Top 25 poll, Selection Day, championship week, the full slate of college awards, and a Top 100 recruit board.

Play With Other People

Four ways to bring other people into the league, none needing everyone online at once.

• Hotseat: pass and play on one save, one PC. The AI never touches a human-owned club on someone else's turn, and when two human GMs are scheduled against each other, both benches show up on the same screen.

• Online Leagues: run a league by file, no accounts or servers. A commissioner holds the copy that advances the calendar. Everyone else imports it, trades, and sends back a turn file checked against the cap.

• Commissioner Mode: take over any club, hand one back to the AI, or edit a player directly.

• Observer Mode: skip the job, watch the league run, drop into any live game as a spectator, and pick up a GM job whenever you want.

Make It Yours

The whole game is moddable through plain JSON files and images, no code required: teams, rosters, logos, commentary, staff, contracts, the salary-cap economy, and the rulebook. The college world is just as open, down to custom conferences, recruiting classes, and rosters. A Modding Starter Kit on the Steam Workshop shows every moddable surface, and online leagues check that everyone runs the same mods.