How it works

Points come from playing - only on the day you play. Yesterday's puzzles are gone; there is no backfilling last week. Showing up every day is the whole game.

Spending points on boosts never touches your leaderboard - it only counts what you earned.

Points buy boosts on your player card. Ratings decide how hard your player carries in career matches - a better card scores more, defends better, wins more. Boosts are cheap through the 60s, cost real points through the 70s and early 80s, superstar prices from 85, and legend prices in the 90s. Your primary class trains its two stats 20% off, your secondary 10% - and where both classes want the same stat the discounts stack, so it trains 30% off.

Weekly missions pay free attribute points: three drop every Monday, each themed to a stat - finish one and claim the boost on your card or the career hub.

The class ladder beside your boosts hands out titles for your build. Each tier asks you to raise its two signature ratings, then prove it in a match - a big game inside your last handful. Claim it for the flair: bragging rights, not a stat boost.

Your position and classes lock the moment you spend points on a boost - the class discount is what a re-pick could game. Free mission points don't lock anything, so claim away. Every ring your career wins lives on the card forever.

Go to your player →

You suit up with nine signed pros - the four who start fill the court around you, the other five ride the bench. Keep them developed and keep showing up - a deeper, in-form roster wins more.

How many games you finish in that window is its own visible term from September 22, 2026 - the prep ladder in The night, below.

Your franchise plays a full season two matches at a time, at 00:00 and 16:00 UTC (8pm and noon ET). A new career opens in The Circuit on a 40-game season; the Majors run 82 games against all thirty NBA clubs, two promotions up. Each match plays out live over 48 minutes, quarter by quarter, with play-by-play. Miss it and the box score is waiting.

Make your tier's bracket and it is a knockout to the title: best-of-5 rounds in the fictional tiers, best-of-7 through to the Finals in the Majors. Win it all and a banner hangs on your franchise - and a ring goes on every card that suited up.

Every playoff team plays its own series on the same two-a-day cadence you do, so the rest of the bracket takes real days to settle - and you won't know who you play next until somebody has actually won it. Sweep your series in four while the other side sits at 2-2 and your franchise waits for them to finish. Your matches pause until the matchup is set, the hub says exactly what it is waiting on, and the full bracket - every round, updating twice a day - is one tap away the whole time.

When the season ends - champion, eliminated, or lottery-bound - the next one tips off after midnight UTC. Same franchise, a fresh schedule. Ratings carry over; the history stays on your record.

Go to Career →

You're the franchise player, so management listens to you. The team page lays your five out on a half-court, by position - sub out exactly the slot you tap, pick the slot when you sub in, or fill an open hole straight from the bench. Position matters: every starter lined up away from his natural spot costs your five -2.5 strength, on every lineup - see how team OVR is calculated. The strength breakdown next to the court itemizes every term the sim counts.

Minutes are yours to spread too - tag each starter heavy, normal, or light (~36 / 26 / 14 minutes) to decide who takes the shots. And spend points to train any teammate's skills right on his row; signature stats train cheaper.

Bench a good teammate too long and he gets restless - first a warning, then he walks. And every so often management finds a prospect who wants in - sign him and pick who makes way, or pass. Want the search to be less random? Send the scouts after a specific class - a report with two candidates lands a few days later.

Every teammate is on a contract - his “signed through” season shows on his card. When a deal is up entering a season, you get a decision window: re-sign him or he walks - and if you ignore it, he walks anyway. Watch the red countdown on the hub.

Need a body beyond the scouts? The recruitment hub has two more doors: the transfer market, where you bid points on pros from other players' franchises (and field bids on yours - you pocket a cut), and the Farm board, where fresh legs sign for points and suit up from tomorrow's games.

It all lands in your front-office news feed on the career hub: signings, walkouts, cuts, and the occasional surprise.

Somewhere out there is a player the league already knows. You hold one at a time - no limit over a career, you just can't have two at once - pick your target on the recruitment page and his front office starts watching. You can switch targets once a day until you commit.

They don't take calls from nobodies. Every target carries a checklist, and the bar scales with who he is - chasing a star means 85 overall, 30 wins, a head-to-head win over his team, and 4,000 points banked. Starters and the under-the-radar tier ask for less. The bars fill as you play; there's nothing to claim.

Clear the checklist and the package builder opens: offer one or two of your own guys plus points, and management rules on whether it clears their asking price. A rejection comes back with what was missing - and their price is re-drawn every week, so the same package can land seven days later.

Career Mode is a simulated universe. Trades, matches, and box scores here are fictional and live only in your league; ratings are airball's own assessment.

Add friends on the friends page - by username or a share link. Then hit Add a friend on any roster spot: every friend shows up with the one right move - a free agent gets an in-app invite (they accept from their career hub), a friend on another roster gets a poach offer. Their live card drives the slot: the more they play and boost, the better your team; ghost the app and they're cold on your bench.

Moonlighting pays: a friend earns a cut every match their card suits up - win or loss, just a bigger cut on a win. Your card can ride ONE friend's bench at a time, and every stint is a real contract: locked for 20 matches (a market deal locks for its own term) before you can walk or be poached away. Friends sign through the current season; re-sign them cheap or they hit free agency.

Every offer needs your say-so - a friend only joins when you tap accept. A handful of players on your friends list carry a snake tag - they were caught tanking a friend's games back when that was possible. The tag is permanent; the trick is not, and nobody can pull it on you now.

Two matches a day, and one decision before each of them. The hub leads with tonight's tip: who you play, where, what your five plays like against theirs, and YOUR CHANCE - how often you win, counting the calls the two tells say they are likely to make. Your chance before their calls is pinned before tip and never moves afterwards, because it is what your night is graded and paid against.

From September 22, 2026 you call a GAME PLAN before every tip, and it locks there. There are 6 of them:

A plan's fit with your five is worth up to +5 points of win probability, and a misfit costs up to the same. Beat the plan the opponent called and the COUNTER pays up to +5 points on top of your plan's fit, less when your chance before their calls is already near the top; call it wrong and it takes up to the same off.

Two TELLS on the card say what tonight's opponent leans on. The FILM ROOM shows the whole mixture, and against a human their last five picks - free, for both tips. It is worth about 0.43 points of win probability on its own, plus whatever the counter is worth tonight, at most +5 points. A decision for the table, not a sink.

PREP is the other half of the night, from September 22, 2026. A rep is a daily game you finished inside the form window; a day with any ranked Possession is one rep for that day; a Chalk Talk counts only alongside 2 site games. Extra play can never lower a rung.

Full or Hot is PREPARED, and prepared is the gate on almost everything the night can pay: the objective, a development tick, the Envelope roll on a win, the huddle and Season Pass XP. From the same day you always suit up - your attendance is this one visible term instead of two hidden charges.

One PREP PASS per ISO week lets a single match play as though you had prepped - a Full - used before tip. It moves the team's strength for that night and nothing else - no pay, no Envelope, no tick, no XP - so a week you could not play does not sink a match you cared about.

The COACH'S OBJECTIVE is one ask a match. Before tip you see only its family; the exact number lands when the match resolves. Hit it and it pays +30 points and one development tick. Two of every three read the team's box and the rest read your own line. The families are Scoring, Rebounding, Playmaking, Defense, The result.

The DEVELOPMENT METER turns good nights into free ratings, from September 23, 2026. A prepared night ticks it for an owner efficiency grade of B+ or better, an objective hit, a league fixture won, or a 6 of 6 Chalk Talk. 8 ticks buy one attribute point, placed on the result card, and a season pays at most 16 points a season this way - somewhere between six and eleven weeks of showing up.

Your team's night is graded against your pinned number rather than the scoreboard: a win at 20% is an A, a loss at 80% an F, a loss at 15% a C. Beating your number is the skill, and it is what a league week ranks on.

And a brand-new franchise does not wait to see any of it. From September 22, 2026 the sign-up wizard sims one SCRIMMAGE on the spot - a full box score with your name in it, everybody sharp, against a bottom-of-table club. It is labelled as an exhibition, pays nothing and counts for nothing; it is there so your first match is not sixteen hours away.

One gotcha: a plan locks at tip and cannot be changed afterwards, and an unprepared night earns no objective, no tick and no Envelope however well it goes.

From September 22, 2026 a career has a tier, and the tier decides who you play, how long your season is and what a win is worth.

A new career opens in The Circuit. Finish in the top 4 and promotion is OFFERED at the season boundary; finish in the bottom 2 and so is relegation. Neither is ever forced, and careers that already existed stay exactly where they are.

The two lower tiers are our own clubs - invented places, invented trades for nicknames, our own crest monograms. No league marks anywhere, and no tier below the Majors calls its final the Finals. Their strength is pinned to the Majors' own mean, so "meaningfully easier than the Majors" stays true when the real league is re-rated.

The gotcha is the pay: the tier is a fact stored on each match, so a promotion raises what your NEXT season's wins pay and never re-prices the season you already played. The margin bonus on a big win survives in every tier.

From September 22, 2026 your career can sit in a LEAGUE: 2 to 10 careers on one shared clock. A league season is 6 ISO weeks - five weeks of fixtures, then the bracket. Your own season carries on underneath it: a fixture is an overlay and never one of those matches.

You can make one and invite people, or be seated. PUBLIC leagues seat by activity rather than by signup: every day at 00:00 UTC, careers with a prepared night in the last 7 days and no league are seated together, and you can opt out. A public league's name is generated, and its last word says how often its members were playing when they were seated: Nightly for a prepared night on 11 or more of the last 21 days, Regulars for 4 or more, Casuals for fewer. Go 14 days with no prepared night and you move to the STANDS - your fixtures become byes, your seat refills, and your next prepared night puts you back, with no message and no stigma. Leaving on purpose carries a 7-day cooldown, so a table you do not like cannot simply be rerolled.

Fixtures tip at 00:00 UTC on Thursday and Sunday, drawn fresh each week over whoever was seated on Monday. Odd numbers mean byes, and a bye costs nothing and earns nothing.

You FIELD a team by being prepared for the tip: reps on the form date or the 4 days before the tip day - four days ending the day before, fixed, so the draw cannot stretch the window for you. Before tip you see the opponent's roster and a roster-only line labelled "before plans"; their fit, their pull and both counters are disclosed after it.

A fixture pays 120 a win and 45 a loss, plus a development tick on a prepared win. There is no cover on one - a handicap means there is no real underdog to pay for.

A fixture's LINE is the sim's own read on your chances from what both sides bring to the tip, and it never moves once fixed. The table ranks on fixture wins MINUS losses, then on projection beaten - the sum of (result minus line, or minus your pinned number) over the week's fixtures and career matches - then on your mean team night grade. A week only exists at all when at least 3 members were prepared at tip for one of that week's fixtures, and the week's winner takes an Envelope and a crest laurel.

Week 6 is the bracket: the top 4 seeds, semi-finals on Thursday's fixture and the final on Sunday's, one game each. It needs 4 members who played - below that the week stays an ordinary round-robin week, because two people cannot stage a final and call one of themselves champion.

A prize needs QUALIFIED members, and qualification is in-season: 40+ completed daily games inside the 6 weeks, and prepared at tip for at least 50% of your own fixtures. Fewer than 3 members qualify and there is no prize and no title at all.

A CLAIM is a discount, not a gift: it buys one lot of that rarity at half its reserve - 300 for a Rare, 600 for an Epic, 1,500 for a Legendary - and your own points still burn. It is valid 7 days, non-transferable, one per member per league season, and its price is stored when it is issued so a later move of the ladder cannot re-price it.

The HUDDLE, from September 22, 2026, is the one line of income you cannot earn alone. On a day when at least 60% of the members with a rep in the last 14 days are prepared for either tip, every prepared member takes +50; when every one of them is, +100. Unprepared members get nothing, and with fewer than 3 prepared members it does not pay at all, whatever the percentage says.

A league-mate riding your bench who prepared is worth +0.5 strength to your five from September 22, 2026 - the TWO-WAY contract, itemised on your breakdown and capped at +1 however many of them there are, which is exactly what your own best week is worth. It is the only term in this sim another person can improve for you.

Private leagues get chat: 500 characters, 50 a day, a slur filter, report, per-person block, a commissioner 24-hour mute and 30 days of retention. Public leagues get the 6 reactions on any table row or fixture, and no chat until September 22, 2026 - a room of strangers waits until the moderation tools have carried real traffic for a quarter. Nudges and friendlies work either way.

A commissioner can rename the league, set its seats, rotate the invite code, opt into Rivalry Weekend, and kick - with 24 hours of notice posted in the chat, and never in the last 2 weeks of a season, which is when a kick would be worth a title. A kicked member's results and any seed they clinched stand; only their future fixtures become byes.

Outside the draw there is the FRIENDLY: a one-off fixture against any friend, or anybody else whose team page invites one. No points, no table, no tick - just a rivalry record between two people who chose each other. A fixture's live page is one URL both sides watch, with a reactions rail down it.

The gotcha most people meet first: preparation is read AT TIP, from the four days before. Playing hard on Monday and Tuesday does not field you on Sunday.

From September 22, 2026 your five are scored on their PAIRS rather than on how many different labels they carry. All ten pairs among the starters are added up and clamped to plus or minus 3. It is the first term in this sim that can go below zero, so a badly assembled five is a real cost now instead of merely a missed bonus.

A creator beside somebody to create for, or the defensive spine together, is worth +0.3 a pair. The weaker complements are worth +0.2. Two men of the SAME class cost -0.5, and a man with no card carries no class at all, so he is worth nothing either way rather than counting as a stack.

And from September 22, 2026 an exact composition has a NAME. Field one of these behind its plan and it adds up to +5 points of win probability on top of that plan's roster fit - as much as the best-shaped five can earn on any plan with a shape, and less for a five already near the top of the scale - and the hub says which one you built.

Hero Ball is the only one that reads ratings instead of classes: your star at least 8 overall above the mean of the other four, and those four averaging 76 or better. That floor is what stops Iso being the right call for a roster nobody ever developed.

Every class, its portrait, its signature ability and the tree it advances along are on the classes page, with the cards on your roster that hold each one.

A system is read over the five who actually FIELD. A short-handed night fields no system at all, whatever your roster looks like on paper.

From September 23, 2026 you can own MINTED cards: globally unique fictional players with a serial, a rarity, exactly one trait, a rating band and one owner. Everything the sim reads about the man derives from his key, so a rating is not a number anybody can edit - and a card that changes hands is the same player on both sides of the trade.

The training caps overlap the band above on purpose, so improving a cheap card is worth doing - but a Common can never reach a Legendary's floor, which is why rarity still matters after any amount of work.

They live in your VAULT: unlimited holding, no upkeep, no timers, no auto-listing, and 6 for the showcase on your public profile. Serials are assigned in draw order at the end of the week, so a fresh card reads serial pending until then - a serial is a claim about order within a week, and the order is not known until the week is.

Training travels with the CARD and not with the seat, so a card you buy arrives carrying every step its last owner paid for, and one you sell leaves with them.

The auction is the price-setter. From September 22, 2026 its bands ARE the rarities, and the board runs 1 Legendary a week plus that week's Epics. Nothing reserves below its rarity's floor on the Trade Block, so there is no arbitrage between the two channels.

Epics and Legendaries are budgeted weekly, and the sheet shows what is left. A short line pays an IOU rather than something else - see The Envelope for exactly what that means.

Minted players are fictional, and every match their numbers come from is simulated. The ratings are airball's own.

A minted card is a player you own outright, and every one of them carries exactly one of the sixteen traits below. The card decides which: the rarity you pulled picks the pool of four, and the card itself picks one of them, the same way it decides his ratings. They sit in your vault until you put one on the floor.

Every number below is measured, not promised. Each trait was run on its own over 9,984 simulated matches across 32 night shapes, on a roster of 77.2, against a control five that won 46.2% of the same nights. What a trait is worth is how far it moved that number.

Four of the sixteen are not paid in win probability at all: an availability rate, two training prices and a development tick. Those four read in amber, and each says what it is worth in its own currency instead. Rounding them to nothing would advertise four good cards as worthless.

They do not simply add up. Across your five, trait strength is capped at +4, probability effects at +5 points, and opponent effects floor at -1.5 - each in its own unit, not in the column above. Four Epics and a Legendary is a five somebody will assemble, and the caps are the answer to it.

All of this happens inside the career sim. Minted players are fictional, the matches these numbers were measured on are simulated, and the ratings are airball's own.

From September 23, 2026 minted cards can change hands for points. List one with an ask; a buyer can BUY NOW at it, or BID under it. Either way their points go into escrow for 48 hours and come straight back if the deal dies. At most 10 open bids at a time, a listing lives 30 days, and for the first 7 days only your own league can see it.

Only minted cards are tradeable. Real players and the house nine are not listable at all, and neither is a card on your five - bring it home to the vault first.

Every price sits inside its rarity's band, and the floors are the auction's own reserves - one ladder for the whole site, so no channel can undercut another.

The caps: 12,000 net received per seller per rolling week; 10,000 gross and 2 transfers per 30 days between any two people, counting both directions; and 5 sales and 5 purchases a week each. Moonlighting shares that pairwise pool, so it cannot become the door these rules push you through.

Trading at all needs 7 days of account age and 20 completed daily games. A card cannot move again for 7 days after it changes hands, or for 30 after an auction win settles.

A THREAD opens on an offer once the seller has replied to it once: 280 characters, 20 messages, the two of you only, filtered, with block and report, kept 30 days. A WATCHLIST remembers a card you cannot afford yet, and gives you no priority of any kind when somebody else can.

SWAPS open later, from September 24, 2026: 1 to 3 cards each way, escrowed for 48 hours. Only the side receiving the greater floor value may add a SWEETENER, and never more than 30% of the floor value it receives - taxed, and counted as a sale and a purchase against every cap above. The floors are frozen when the swap is proposed, so a band move cannot re-price a deal both sides already agreed to.

The gotcha: the tax comes off the SELLER's proceeds, and the worse of the two standings decides it - so a trusted seller dealing with a brand-new account pays the new account's rate.

From September 22, 2026 the Envelope is the whole site's gacha - the old cosmetic codes fold into it, one draw table and one reveal. Envelopes are EARNED by playing and queue without expiry - however many you earn, you can open up to 3 a day.

Three PITY counters run independently and all three are shown: a Rare or better by the 15th draw without one, a Epic or better by the 60th draw without one, a Legendary on the 200th draw without one. A Rare is not evidence that an Epic is coming, so being paid one never pushes the others back.

Where they come from, and every one of them is gated on play: a 4 of 6 Chalk Talk on a day that also carries 2 site games; a prepared match win, at a 25% chance and at most one a day; your 7th consecutive prepared day; the week your league wins; referral milestones; the Season Pass; and events.

If your queue is empty you can buy one - the scout's tip - for 400 points, at most 3 a week. A bought Envelope never advances a pity counter and never resets one, so nobody buys their way to a Legendary.

A duplicate cosmetic converts to SHINE, a cosmetic-only dust banked on your card, worth what the tier that produced it is worth: Brick 5, Solid 15, Heater 40, Ring Night 120. Shine buys cosmetics and nothing else. It is never points, and no minted card is ever points either.

The published table is the table the wheel walks, and the site measures itself against it over hundreds of thousands of draws. Points carry the small remainder the percentages above do not allocate, which is why they read as they do rather than as a round number.

Chalk Talk is the career-only daily. 6 rounds, each offering 6 calls of which two or three are right: an opponent's tells and your own five's shape, and what you would call against them. Every wrong option is a real plan, a real system or a real trait - a daily whose wrong answers are obviously fake is answered by elimination in four seconds.

4 of 6 earns an Envelope. 6 of 6 earns an Envelope and one development tick. It pays no points directly, and it is not one of the site's daily games - it has no slot on the grid and no place in your sweep.

Go to Chalk Talk →

30 rungs of 25 XP each, one ladder per 6-week league season. Every rung costs the same, so "three more reps is a rung" is always true. Free, with no paid track, ever.

XP comes from four things: 2 a completed daily game (up to 3 a day), 5 for a Chalk Talk however it scored, 8 for an objective banked, and 10 for a match or fixture you were prepared for at tip BY PLAY. A day is worth at most 30 XP, a little over one rung, so the whole ladder is about 25 full days out of forty-two - a committed season finishes it, and a patchy one still reaches the Rare.

The gotcha: a match that simmed while you were away earns no XP, and neither does a match played on a prep pass. The Season Pass counts nights you were prepared for by PLAYING.

Every share link carries your code, and a career created from one records who sent it. Nothing at all is paid for signing up - both halves of the bonus vest on nights somebody actually played.

The invitee earns a 500-point signing bonus, vested 100 a night over their prepared nights from the 3rd to the 7th - counted from the night their franchise existed, not from the night they happened to play. The first two nights pay nothing on purpose: those are the ones a farm can produce cheaply, and they are also the ones a real newcomer plays before deciding.

You get an Envelope at their 3rd prepared night, and +250 at their 14th day once they have 20 completed daily games and one league fixture they were prepared for. You have to meet the trading gate yourself, and at most 10 invitees per 30 days are ever paid for.

Your referral page prints whichever condition is still outstanding - "needs a fixture: they are not in a league" - rather than a bare "not yet", so it is always something you can act on.

From October 5, 2026 there is one 2-week event a quarter, and it rewards a league for being ALIVE rather than for winning. A league qualifies when 5 members each clear the bar: 10+ prepared nights out of 14, the trading gate, and a card at 68+ overall.

The prize is a Legendary claim at half reserve - 1,500 points, and a separate allowance from the league season's one claim - drafted among the qualifying members by a lottery weighted on prepared nights and fixture record, plus an ordinary Envelope for each of them. A bare qualifier can win it: ten nights out of fourteen is the work the event is for, and the draw is a lottery rather than a coronation.

RIVALRY WEEKEND closes the fortnight. Leagues are paired by size and played member against member; the winning league takes a pennant and +100 each for its prepared members. Public leagues are in by visibility, private ones opt in through their commissioner, and only public usernames ever cross over.

There are recruiter boards too, league- and friend-scoped, for the invitees who qualified inside the fortnight. The top recruiter in a league gets a crest border.

Your own card carries six CHAPTERS, in order, each paid once for as long as your account exists. They are counts of things that already happened, so there is nothing to claim and nothing to miss - and they are awarded in sequence, because a Superstar who is not yet a Starter is a bug you can see.

LEGACY is one number, and it adds up what is hard: 2 a prepared game, 5 a league week won, 40 a league title, 25 a playoff series won, 150 a ring, 1 a perfect Chalk Talk, plus whatever the development meter overflows once you are at 99 everywhere. Legend needs 600 of it and the Hall of Fame 1,000.

A ring is worth seventy-five prepared nights, which is the ranking on purpose: legacy has to be reachable by turning up, and still move when something rare happens. Your league's trophy room keeps the rest.

From September 22, 2026 career income is capped at 2,000 points per UTC day. It sums the streams career mode pays: match rewards and their covers, objectives, Envelope points, the huddle, fixtures and their covers, Rivalry Weekend, and a vested invitee bonus.

Three things sit outside that sum. Your DAILY-GAME points are not career income and are never touched by it. TRANSFERS - a card sale, Moonlighting rent, market vesting - are points that already existed somewhere else, and clipping one would destroy a seller's points after a buyer had already paid. And a few streams are named EXEMPTIONS: each chapter, once per account; the inviter's +250; and a league champion's and runner-up's points, once per league season.

Everything you play is training - a fresh slate of seventeen drops at midnight in your local time, and Possession is there whenever you want it. Here's how each one works.