Steam Community :: Hardwood Basketball Manager

HARDWOOD BASKETBALL MANAGER 0.9.4

20 Jun

HIGHLIGHTS
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• NHA Development League - take a dev club job and run a full season,
draft, and playoff race as its head of basketball operations.
• Affiliates & two-way deals - co-manage your farm team, send players
down, call them up, and sign fringe talent to two-way contracts.
• Hardwood Heat - all 30 clubs play a 10-day July summer league you
can sim or step in and coach.
• Waiver wire - released players now hit a two-day league-wide wire
before reaching free agency, worst record claiming first.
• Player history - every player now carries his full career: draft
details, all awards, and a complete transaction log.

THE NHA DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE
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Manage a Development League club from the team-select grid. Each club
carries a DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE badge; most are NHA affiliates, one is
independent with its own owner.

• Dev clubs run leaner staff. No physician slot, two specialist
slots maximum (vs. five in the NHA).
• Dev trades and the trade block carry no morale hit.
• Elite coaches will not accept development-league roles.

AFFILIATES & TWO-WAY PLAYERS
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Manage Affiliate is the master control on the Boardroom Development
Affiliate card. On = your affiliate runs at full detail with its
roster revealed and every action unlocked. Off = AI runs it. Toggle
any time.

Send-down and call-up:
• Right-click any standard-contract player to Send Down to Affiliate
or Call Up. Sent-down players keep their NHA contract on your books.
• Calling up requires an open roster spot.
• Veterans with more than three years of service cannot be
force-sent-down - use Ask to Join Affiliate instead.

Two-way contracts:
• Offer a fringe free agent one of three two-way slots, paid by the
parent club and off your salary cap.
• Two-way players suit up for up to 50 NHA games per season, then
return to the affiliate automatically.
• Convert to a standard deal at any time to keep him on the roster.

Active roster:
• Each dev roster row has an Active / Inactive toggle; up to 13
players dress per game. AI clubs always activate their best 13.

HARDWOOD HEAT (THE NHA SUMMER LEAGUE)
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Runs July 20-30 after every NHA season. All 30 clubs field a summer
squad of young talent and free-agent invitees. A short prelim round
feeds a top-four semifinal and final. Sim the whole thing or step in
and coach your own games.

• Your squad is built from young players and rookies plus up to four
free-agent invitees.
• Exclusive signing rights to your invitees once the tournament ends.
• Scouting carries over: known players show in gold, unknowns appear
as a dimmed estimate.
• Awards: Summer League MVP, All-Hardwood Heat First and Second Teams,
and Championship MVP - all logged to the news and each player's
career awards.

PLAYER HISTORY
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Every player profile now includes a full career history section:

• DRAFT INFO - round, pick number, drafting team, and draft-class
year.
• AWARDS - every accolade across the NHA and Development League,
tagged by league and season.
• TRANSACTION HISTORY - every roster move (drafted, signed, traded,
released) in chronological order.

FREE AGENCY & ROSTER
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• Waiver wire added as a permanent league mechanism. Releasing a
player puts him on a two-day wire; clubs claim in worst-record-first
order, inheriting his full contract. Rival AI clubs only claim a
genuine upgrade they can afford. Players who clear the wire
become free agents.

MODDING
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Mod support now reaches the new leagues and systems - all through JSON,
no code. The Modding Starter Kit on Steam Workshop ships an example of
each.

• Game rules per league - quarter length, fouls, overtime, timeouts -
for the NHA, Development League, and Hardwood Heat.
• Roster and economy caps - two-way and affiliate roster math, plus
development-league sizing.
• Development team branding - re-skin the dev clubs' cities, names,
and colors.
• Award and trophy names - rename any award, e.g. for a real-league
roster pack.
• Player progression and injury frequency - tune the aging, growth,
and retirement curves and the injury rate.

Rules and economy mods take effect on a new career; the rest on a new
league. See the in-game modding guide for the full reference.

BUG FIXES
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• Fixed an issue where jersey numbers showed blank after a call-up
or roster move.
• Fixed raw award tag codes (e.g. ALL_DEF_1) leaking into the news
feed and Hub pill instead of rendering their proper names.
• Fixed competitions showing as permanently In Progress on the
scouting board.
• Fixed player screen tab content not scrolling without a mouse
wheel. Scrollbars are now slightly thicker across the game.
• Fixed the Cap Sheet extension button overlapping its row.
• Fixed signing screen scrollbar spacing.
• Fixed 10-day contracts not opening on time - the availability check
was reading the wrong season's calendar. Signings now open
January 5 of the current season.
• Fixed 10-day contracts never counting games played - the counter
stayed at zero and the three-game limit never triggered.
• Fixed 10-day signings instantly revealing a player's full ratings.
You now scout him gradually as he plays, like any signing.
• Fixed the draft freezing when the prospect pool ran short.
• Fixed past Hardwood Heat box scores listing your full NHA roster,
with most players marked DNP, instead of the summer squad that
actually played.
• Fixed long help text on the Minutes tab pushing the roster table
off the right edge of the screen.

KNOWN ISSUES
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• Trading development draft picks is not yet supported; the Picks
tab is hidden when managing a dev club.

Hardwood Basketball Manager

2

0

To the dev:

Just getting a feel for your game. Very in depth and comprehensive - a look at the manual confirms this; I can envision much thought, time, and yes, probably money that was poured into it. I'm playing the default mode and am at the stage just before the first regular season game. Some observations: 1) On the players' cards the attributes (skill, etc.) ratings and their accompanying line representations bleed back into the name or type of attribute, rendering it partly unreadable. 2) ...

4

thunderpup

1 Jun @ 6:02pm

General Discussions

HARDWOOD BASKETBALL MANAGER 0.9.2 - June 1 update

1 Jun

HARDWOOD BASKETBALL MANAGER - UPDATE 0.9.2

0.9.2 builds out the off-court career layer: an owner who can fire you, a real team economy, a coaching carousel, a GM
job market, a full injury system, and a created GM persona your owner personally walks through the game. The whole
interface has also been reskinned to a warm broadcast look called PRIMETIME. Available now on Steam.

Most of the new front-office systems switch on in the salary era. That means Season 4 onward in an NHA Origin
career, or day one of a Full NHA career. The early NHA Origin seasons play as before.

OWNERS & FINANCES

Every team now answers to an owner with a spending tier, a wealth level, and a win-now or profit lean.
A new Boardroom screen collects your owner, your job security, the season's objectives, and the club's full books
in one place.
Revenue comes from national TV money, market-scaled local income, and revenue sharing. Expenses are payroll,
operating costs, and the luxury tax as an actual cash bill.
Season objectives are tiered (Required, Preferred, Favoured), judged at season's end, and tracked through a 0-100
job-security gauge.
Missing a Required objective drops the gauge. A sustained shortfall can get you fired, but only ever after a
visible warning the season before.

THE COACHING CAROUSEL

Your head coach, both assistants, and your scout are full staff members you hire, fire, and negotiate with. Each is
rated across six tactical attributes the match engine reads.
A new Hire Staff screen lets you browse every candidate. A "View as" selector re-rates everyone through the lens of
the role you are filling.
Hiring is a negotiation. Set a role, a salary, and a one-to-five-year term. The coach accepts, counters, or
declines based on how much they want to join. A top coach can refuse a weak or small-market club at any salary.
Staff salaries are an operating expense, separate from the player cap and tax. Your owner sets a hard ceiling on
total staff pay, and firing mid-contract owes a buyout.
You can pry a rival's coordinators or scout away for a buyout. A poached coordinator opens a vacancy you must fill
before the day advances.
The Personnel hub brings your owner, coaching, and medical staff onto one screen, with right-click menus that show
the money first. You can also promote your own staff into an interim core role and resolve it later.

DEVELOPMENT STAFF

Two new optional roles are available: up to five development Specialists (each focused on Shooting, Defending,
Rebounding, Skills, or Fitness) and one Physician carrying a Level (I, II, or III).
An assigned Specialist speeds in-domain growth and softens the decline for the players under them, scaled by how
good they are.
A new Evolution tab on the Personnel screen shows every player's development phase, star rating, trend, ceiling,
assigned Specialist, and an expandable season-by-season history.
Rival clubs assign their own Specialists each off-season, so league talent grows alongside yours.

THE INJURY SYSTEM

After every game, each player who logged minutes rolls for an injury based on minutes played, age, fatigue, and
durability.
Severity runs from day-to-day knocks to season-enders. Major injuries leave a permanent mark, and all recoveries
include a minutes ramp on return.
A player can go down in the game you are watching, forcing a substitution rendered on the spot.
Minor knocks are playable with a physical debuff, but push a player too hard and the injury can aggravate into a
real absence. Moderate and worse injuries bench the player outright.
Injured players cannot be traded, released, picked for the All-Star game, assigned to a Specialist, or worked in
practice.
A higher Physician Level means fewer injuries, faster recovery, and a Physician's Report on the Personnel screen.
Injuries also feed a new INJURIES tab in the News feed.

THE GM CAREER

Getting fired is not game over. You carry a league-wide reputation (Unproven up to Renowned) that gates job offers
from rival clubs.
You can take over a new club (your old one reverts to AI) or sit unemployed and wait for a better post. There is no
GM salary. An offer is a choice of where to go next.
A new World layer lets you browse a full World > Continent > Nation > Category > League hierarchy, with News moved
into a scoped, breadcrumbed Hub sidebar.
Every new career starts by building a persona: name, age, and a Former Player or Former Coach background, shown as
six coaching-grade star ratings.
Your background gives your team a small, capped on-court edge in your strong dimensions and a slight edge at the
negotiating table. It applies to your team only and is tuner-safe.
The first time you open each key screen, your owner sends a one-time, in-character note walking you through it.

PRESENTATION (PRIMETIME)

A warm near-black canvas with a single ember accent replaces the old cool-blue theme, rolled out across the Hub and
dozens of other screens.
The Hub gets a new broadcast hero and a scoreboard stat strip showing Record, Streak, and Job Security.
A tall condensed display face handles scoreboard-style headers. A clean body face handles everything else.
The live scoreboard is restyled to match, with score numbers set in the new display face.

GUIDES & QUALITY OF LIFE

Written guides for Contracts, Staff, Scouting, and the early-years NHA Origin roster rules are now in the game,
opened from a "?" icon next to the relevant heading.
Other changes include an animated match loading screen, contextual tooltips throughout, a consistent top navigation
bar, and a new staff detail screen.

MODDING

Mods can now place their own staff onto teams via roster/coaches.json (the file the Export Tool always wrote but
the game never imported).
Full NHA roster packs now load correctly, slotting mod players onto full, contracted rosters.
You can pin an exact contract on a player directly in a Full NHA roster pack.
A new finance/finance_config.json lets advanced modders re-tune the entire economy: cap, tax line, aprons, floor,
growth rate, and revenue model.

BUG FIXES

Fixed an issue causing the end-of-season settlement to be skipped when advancing through the off-season with Sim To
Date, leaving player and staff contracts frozen (rookies stuck at "4 years remaining," coaches never ageing). The
settlement now runs exactly once per season and self-heals if its calendar day is skipped.
Fixed an issue in Full NHA causing established veterans whose contracts had expired to be re-drafted as rookies.
The draft now considers only the current season's actual prospects.
Fixed an issue causing injuries sustained in a game you watched live to wipe the rest of the league's existing
injuries from the save.
Fixed an issue causing AI teams to keep playing injured players who should have been sidelined.
Fixed an issue causing the Finals news headline to read "NBA Finals Set" instead of the NHA league name, and a
related issue hiding the calendar's playoff-round highlight.
Fixed an issue causing the Rotations bench tooltip to always read "benched for discipline" even when a player was
injured or playoff-ineligible.
Fixed an issue allowing Submit Team with an empty starting position. Falling below a player's minutes minimum is
now a non-blocking warning rather than a submission error.
Fixed an issue causing the League screen to show a hardcoded "4 Teams" header instead of the real league size, and
another displaying raw day numbers instead of dates.

KNOWN ISSUES

Some owner objectives (lottery tanking, division finishes) are credited rather than fully resolved from final
standings for now. Full resolution arrives in a later update.
Freshly hired Specialists have no effect on the very first jump into a Full NHA season because there is no
preceding off-season for the development run. They take effect from the next off-season onward.
In a single league, rival job offers arrive once per season. Hold out and the next batch comes a season later.
The World browser only has the NHA behind it today. The hierarchy is built to support more leagues.
The PRIMETIME backdrop's film-grain texture is a planned future addition.

EXISTING SAVES

The new front-office systems (owners, finances, staff salaries and budgets, injuries, and the job market) activate in
the salary era, which covers NHA Origin Season 4 onward and any Full NHA career. Earlier sessions are unaffected.
Existing saves upgrade automatically: finance columns are added on load, an owner is generated for each club once a
save reaches the salary era, and pre-update scouts are migrated into the unified staff pool. The GM persona and
onboarding tour appear on new careers only. The data-integrity fixes above are forward-looking. A save that already
has frozen contracts or a wiped injury list will not auto-repair, but seasons played from this version onward will
behave correctly.

Hardwood Basketball Manager

1

0

HARDWOOD BASKETBALL MANAGER — UPDATE 0.9.1

30 Apr

Hotfix patch addressing launch-day issues with mod compatibility, Steam Deck rendering, pre-game validation, and
scouting visibility on player cards. Available now on Steam.

MOD LOADER

- Fixed an issue causing mod-defined players (e.g. from hardwood-starter-kit) to enter the Foundry showcase and Snake
Draft alongside generated rookies. Mod-defined players now stay on their declared team through Foundry, the draft, and
the post-draft Free Agency window.
- Fixed an issue causing the roster override to re-create mod-defined players from scratch every time a match was
loaded. The override now applies once and subsequent reloads are no-ops.

USER INTERFACE

- Fixed an issue causing stars, arrows, house, info, math operators, and most non-Latin glyphs to render as
placeholder boxes on Steam Deck and other Linux systems via Proton. Two text-rendering fallback fonts are now bundled.

GAME PREP

- Fixed an issue causing the Submit Team button to remain available when one or more rotation players had no depth
chart slot, leading to "EMPTY" positions in the Matchup Preview. Submit Team now requires every player with allocated
minutes to be placed in at least one depth chart slot. The Minutes tab status bar reports unassigned players when this
validation fails.

SCOUTING

- Fixed an issue causing the player tiles on the Matchup Preview screen to display the true overall, full traits, and
Revealed-tier star colour for opponents and for own-team players still in gradual reveal — including newly-signed Free
Agents who had not yet hit their reveal threshold.
- Fixed an issue causing the narrative scouting block on the Matchup Preview screen to treat all own-roster players as
fully revealed regardless of their actual scouting state.
- Fixed similar issues across the Rotations depth chart picker, the Groups tab slot display and picker, the Trade
screen, the Trade Proposal screen, the Free Agency screen, and the default sort on the Player Pool table (used by the
Front Office and Scouting screens). All player ratings now respect scouting reveal consistently.

KNOWN ISSUES

- The hot-streak indicator emoji on Matchup Preview player tiles still renders as a placeholder box on Steam Deck.
Single-character cosmetic issue, addressed in a future patch.

EXISTING SAVES

Most changes apply immediately on update. Saves created before 0.9.1 with hardwood-starter-kit (or any mod using
roster overrides) active may have mod-defined players placed on the wrong teams; those saves will not auto-repair, but
new games show the corrected behaviour.

Hardwood Basketball Manager

0

Workshop Item

Real Teams World

Breeze837

View Steam Workshop items

Workshop Item

Modding Starter Kit

mythicfluxfoundry

View Steam Workshop items

No one has rated this review as helpful yet

Recommended

63.6 hrs on record

Posted: 27 June

After spending some time on the game, I think this game has potential to be one of the deepest basketball simulations out there. The ai gameplay makes me consider player builds as the way to build winning teams rather than just look at ratings like a bad shooter but a good defender won't take as much shots or at all while a top shooter will take a lot of shots in order to help the team win which convinces me that the dev has a different perspective of the game of basketball. One of the things I do like about the game is how GM and ai teams don't know everything about other players and having to use scouts in order to gather intel about a player or the whole league during a certain point of the year including playoffs and the combine. I think this game has potential to improve UI and visuals for players navigating through the game while enjoying the depth of the game. If I had to pick a favorite feature from this game, it'd be the G League and summer league for scouting and player development aspect of the game. I can't wait for what the developer has in store for the game! I definitely recommend checking this game out and joining the discord since the dev listens to people's comments, questions, bug reports and suggestions for improving the game.

Breeze837

0