Hardwood GM Basketball Manager

You do not play the games. You sit in the chair above them. Hardwood GM is a text-based basketball management simulation about the part of the sport nobody films: the phone calls, the contract years, the conversation with a franchise player who wants to know what the plan is and will not accept a non-answer. THE LOCKER ROOM IS THE GAME Every player has a personality: an Alpha Dog who needs the ball, a Company Man who buys in, a Ring Chaser counting the years he has left. Praise the wrong one and it lands as condescension. Ignore a complaint long enough and it hardens into a trade demand, then into a player who stops showing up. You get four Action Points a day. You cannot talk to everyone, and the game knows it. BUILD IT HOWEVER YOU LIKE - A trade machine that prices talent, age, upside and contract surplus, and refuses to let a pile of role players buy a superstar - Draft picks that mean something, with protections, swaps and a lottery that genuinely rewards a rebuild - A scouting department working next June's class from opening night, with a consensus board that keeps moving whether you are watching or not - Salary cap, luxury tax, the apron, buyouts, two-way contracts, a February trade deadline - Sign-and-trades, a supermax for the star you built around, and Sim to trade deadline day A LEAGUE THAT LIVES WITHOUT YOU Rival teams trade with each other. Coaches lose their jobs. Small-market clubs in dead buildings pack up and move to a new city. Records fall, numbers go into the rafters, and the Hall of Fame fills up with players you drafted, developed, and eventually had to let go. A FULL SEASON, EVERY SEASON 82 games, a play-in for the last two seeds, a 16-team playoff bracket, MVP, Finals MVP decided on the Finals alone, All-Star weekend, and an owner with three mandates and a limited supply of patience. Clinch early and you choose whether to rest your starters or chase the seed, and after every playoff series the media wants a word. A CAREER, NOT A SAVE FILE Get fired and the phone rings. You have your own contract, your own reputation, and a job history that follows you from club to club, so the sack is the middle of the story rather than the end of it. Stay long enough and the league changes underneath you: the cap grows, the style of play drifts, and the contract that looked enormous in your first season looks ordinary by your fifteenth. READ THE NUMBERS OR IGNORE THEM True shooting, usage, a player rating on the scale you already know, live MVP and Rookie of the Year ladders from fifteen games in, career leaders, a franchise record book, and an argument about the greatest career the league has produced. Compare any two players side by side. Every season ends with a yearbook: the record, how the run finished, who led the club and on what, the hardware, the trade everybody argued about, and who walked away. YOUR CAREER IS A FILE YOU KEEP Back any career up to Files or iCloud Drive and restore it on a new phone. No account, nothing uploaded, no cost. Free to play. The ads are optional, rewarded, and never interrupt you. Watch one for a rewind or extra Action Points, or never watch one at all. Everything else is optional too: the Front Office Pass and Situations Vol. 2, 3 and 4 open up more ways to start a career, Retro Eras lets you start in one of four classic league styles, Challenge Rules lets you play under Homegrown, Loyalist, Under the Line and Iron Man rules with a trophy for each, Create-A-Player lets you design a prospect for this year's draft, Token Boost gives you a free token every day, League Architect lets you recolor and relocate any club, and the Complete GM Bundle has all nine for less. The Founder's Edition adds a gold look on top for players who want to support the game. None of them makes a team better, and you can finish every season without any of them. Fictional league, fictional players. Every career generates a fresh world.