How Bball Lab works

League Rules

Drafts, contracts, lineups, scoring, and trades, straight from how the app works.

409 rules

League & Membership

49 rules

Creating a league

Any signed-in user can create a league. The creator becomes the league’s commissioner and owns its first team.
A league starts in the NBA season that is current when it is created. Each renewal moves it to the next season. A league can’t be renamed.
Each user can be commissioner of at most 3 active Private Leagues. Public Leagues have a separate limit; see Public Leagues.
A Private League holds 2 to 12 teams. The commissioner sets the team count before the draft starts, never below the teams already in, and it starts at 12.
League names and team names are 1–30 characters, and display names are 1–80. Team names in a league must be different, ignoring capitalization.

Public Leagues

Anyone can find and join a Public League until it fills or its Initiation Draft starts. Joining needs only a team name; there are no invitations.
Members can leave a Public League until its Initiation Draft starts, which reopens their spot. If the commissioner leaves, the member who joined earliest becomes commissioner. A commissioner who is the only member deletes the league instead, except in a house league.
The creator picks the league name, a team name, the draft start, and the draft pace. The draft start must be at least 5 minutes away. A Public League holds up to 12 teams.
Every other setting uses the standard defaults and stays locked.
Live pace: 2-minute rounds, about an hour in all. Slow pace: 12-hour rounds, about 10 days in all.
Every Public League draft has 20 rounds and uses the default player pool.
Top bid CVS is always hidden in Public Leagues, in both the Initiation Draft and Free Agency.
Auto draft is on by default. If you never bid yourself, it bids the minimum for players who fit your open slots, so your team still gets a roster. See Auto draft.
You can’t create a Public League while you’re already commissioner of 3 whose drafts haven’t started.

House leagues

Bball Lab keeps Public Leagues of its own open, named “Bball Lab Open”: one drafting at 6 p.m. ET and one at 9 p.m. ET. Each has 12 teams and Live pace. When one fills or its draft starts, the next opens.
A house league’s draft starts once 4 teams have joined. With 1 to 3 teams at draft time, the draft moves to the same time the next night and every member gets an email. It can move 3 times.
After 3 moves, the draft starts with 2 or 3 teams. With 1 team, the league is deleted and its member gets an email. A league nobody has joined keeps moving a night at a time.
A draft can’t move past the February 1 entry deadline. On the last night before it, the draft starts with 2 or more teams, and a league with fewer is deleted.
The first person to join is the commissioner, but can only edit the Discord link. Bball Lab sets the draft start, and nobody can delete the league. Its last member can leave; the next person to join becomes commissioner.
House leagues stop opening at the February 1 entry deadline and return next season. They don’t count toward your limit of 3 Public Leagues.

Commissioner in public leagues

In a Public League a person created, the commissioner has three powers: changing the draft start while they’re the only member, deleting the league while they’re the only member, and editing the league’s Discord link. A house league’s commissioner can only edit the Discord link.
Every other commissioner tool is off in a Public League, including League Admin, starting, pausing, or canceling the draft, removing teams, changes to any team’s roster, contracts, or lineup, player holds, pickup freezes, canceling Offer Windows, renewing the league, and approving or vetoing trades, which a league vote decides instead.
While anyone else is a member, the draft start is locked and the league can’t be deleted.
If a Public League draft pauses itself, Bball Lab staff resume it.
If the commissioner is the only member when the draft is due to start, the league is deleted and the commissioner gets an email. Otherwise the draft starts on time with everyone still in the league. House leagues follow their own rules.

Entry deadline

Creating leagues closes February 1 at 12 a.m. ET each season and reopens when the new season starts July 1. Joining also closes February 1.
After February 1, an Initiation Draft that hasn’t started can’t be created, rescheduled, or started. Leagues already playing are unaffected.

Join link

Each Private League has one join link, which the commissioner shares from League Admin. Anyone with the link can join with a team name until the league reaches its team count or the Initiation Draft starts.
The commissioner can reset the link at any time before the draft. The old link stops working right away; teams already in stay.
A removed team can rejoin with the link until the commissioner resets it.

Commissioner and managers

Each league has one commissioner, its creator. Everyone who joins is a manager. The commissioner role can’t be transferred, except that it passes on when a Public League’s commissioner leaves.
Only a team’s manager can rename it. Roster moves and lineups are also the manager’s, apart from commissioner changes.
The commissioner changes another team from League Admin or with Edit as admin on its Roster or Cap Sheet. Every change appears in the league’s admin activity, which every member can see.
Other managers see only your display name and avatar, never your real name or email.

Commissioner settings

Trade Window: when trades open and the trade deadline. See Trades.
Maximum contract: the largest annual salary a bid can offer, as a percentage of the cap. See Salary Cap & Contracts.
G League call-ups: how many call-ups each team gets per season. See Rosters & Lineups.
Playoff Start Offset: moves the playoffs 0–3 weeks earlier. See Season, Standings & Playoffs.
Show top bid CVS: when on, managers see the highest bid’s Contract Value Score on each Offer Window. Off by default. It applies to Offer Windows opened after the change.
Pickup freeze: stops Ten-Day pickups, re-signings, and new Offer Windows for the whole league. Offer Windows already open keep running.
Discord link: the league’s Discord invite. Only league members see it.

Commissioner tools

The commissioner can release, move, or swap players on any team, add a free agent to a team, void contracts, clear dead cap, end Ten-Day Contracts, and replace a team’s lineup before it locks.
The commissioner can place a hold on a player and cancel an Offer Window.
In a Private League, the commissioner approves or vetoes every trade. Public League trades go to a league vote.
The commissioner renews the league with Continue to Next Season and can reschedule the Rookie Draft until its start time. See Season, Standings & Playoffs and Rookie Draft.

Leaving and removing teams

In a private league, managers can’t leave on their own.
In a public league, a manager can leave until the draft starts if their team has no players, contracts, or trades. Their spot opens up again. If the commissioner leaves, the member who joined earliest becomes commissioner. A commissioner who is the only member can’t leave and deletes the league instead, except in a house league.
Before the Initiation Draft starts, a Private League’s commissioner can remove a team that has no players, contracts, bids, or trades. The commissioner’s own team can’t be removed.
Before any Initiation Draft has started, a Private League’s commissioner can delete the league. A Public League can be deleted only while its commissioner is the only member, and a house league never by a member. Deleting cancels the league’s draft, Offer Windows, and trades.

Initiation Draft

42 rules

Setup

In a Private League, the commissioner creates and runs the draft: start time, number of rounds, and bidding time per round. The commissioner can reschedule or cancel it only before it starts. Public League drafts are set when the league is created.
A league has one draft per season.
Rounds: 1 to 20. Bidding time per round: 1 minute to 24 hours, 2 minutes by default.
The salary cap, maximum contract, bidding time, and number of rounds are locked when the draft is created. The draft has its own Show top bid CVS choice, off by default, also set at creation.
Every draft uses boards of 10 players, a 30-second reveal, up to 3 bids per team per round, a $2M minimum salary, and contracts of 1 to 4 years.
The draft can start only after the season’s draft window opens and before February 1, with at least 2 teams. In a Private League, scheduling or rescheduling a start time also needs at least 2 teams.
The draft starts automatically at its scheduled time. A Private League’s commissioner can also start it early.
An hour before the scheduled start, every manager gets an email reminder.
Starting the draft locks in the season’s teams and playoff format.

Player pool

The pool is every active NBA player not already on a roster in the league, in Bball Lab’s draft ranking for that season. Players the ranking leaves out follow it, ordered by last regular season’s average fantasy points per game. Players without a last-season average come last, by name. Until a ranking is set, the whole pool uses that fantasy points order.
Pool order decides when each player first appears on a board. The order can change until the draft starts, then stays fixed.
Everyone can see the full pool in draft order, before and during the draft. During the draft, the Player Pool tab also shows who won each player and estimates the round the draft ends after.

Rounds

Each round shows a board of up to 10 players. Players carried over from the last round come first.
Bidding stays open for the round’s bidding time. Then results are revealed for 30 seconds and the next round opens.
During the draft, each team can hold up to 18 players: its Active, Bench, and G League slot total. Every player counts, including IR and extra Bench. Moving players between slots never creates draft room.
Each draft win takes an open Active or Bench slot the player fits. If none fits, your Active and Bench players can shift to make room. A win with no Active or Bench room goes to your first open G League slot. That needs G League room: draft room left beyond your open Active and Bench slots. IR and extra Bench players use that room too. Once the Regular Season starts, bringing a draft win up from the G League uses a call-up.
IR slots add no draft room, and draft wins never go to IR.
The draft ends when no team can legally bid the $2M minimum, after the last round, or when the pool runs out.
When the draft ends, every player left in the pool becomes a free agent and the season schedule is published.

Unclaimed players

A player nobody wins carries over once to the next board, ahead of new players. Last chance marks their final appearance.
A player left unclaimed on 2 boards leaves the draft as a free agent.
Bids don’t carry over. A carried-over player needs new bids.
Losing bids cost nothing.
A team that places no bids wins no players, and those slots stay open after the draft.

Auto draft

On the My Ranking tab you rank the players left in the pool, before and during the draft. Only you can see your ranking and whether auto draft is on.
Auto draft bids on players you have set a Target for, at your Target’s terms. In a Private League, with no Targets it bids on no one. See Targets.
With auto draft on, each round bids on the board’s players who have a Target, up to your bid limit. It goes in your ranking order, then pool order for players you haven’t ranked. It skips Targets you can’t bid right now, such as more than you can afford, and never lowers a Target. Auto draft is off by default in a Private League and on in a Public League. You confirm before turning it on.
In a Public League, until you place, change, or withdraw a bid yourself, auto draft also bids the $2M minimum on 1 year, non-guaranteed, for board players who fit your open slots: G, F and C first, then UTIL, then Bench. It stops once your Active and Bench slots are covered. Teams start at different places on the board, so they don’t all bid on the same players.
Target bids go in when a round opens, or as soon as you turn auto draft on during bidding. Minimum bids for open slots go in only when a round opens. Auto bids are normal bids you can change or withdraw, and a withdrawn bid isn’t placed again that round. Turning auto draft off keeps Target bids already placed.
Turning auto draft off withdraws the minimum bids it placed that round; turning it back on resumes them. Placing, changing, or withdrawing a bid yourself also withdraws them and ends them for the rest of the draft.

During the draft

From the time a draft is created until it ends, nobody can sign Ten-Day Contracts or bid in Free Agency, and managers can’t drop players. Moves, swaps, and commissioner releases are still allowed.
A Private League’s commissioner can pause and resume the draft. Bidding stops while it is paused, and resuming adds the paused time back to the round.
If a round gets stuck 5 minutes past its deadline, the draft pauses itself until it is resumed.

What you can see

During bidding, everyone sees how many bids each player has, but not who bid or the terms. You see your own bids.
With Show top bid CVS on, each player also shows the highest bid’s Contract Value Score.
Results show each winner, their contract, the winning CVS, and any tie-break. Every active bid on a won player is listed with its terms and CVS, without naming the other bidders. Withdrawn bids aren’t shown.
Bids on players nobody won stay sealed.
Only managers with a team can open the Draft Room.

Practice Draft

Anyone can run a Practice Draft, two rounds against computer teams, from the welcome page without signing in. Until your league’s draft starts, managers can also practice with their league’s settings.
It runs only in your browser and changes nothing in your league. Targets you change in practice aren’t saved.
You can end a practice round early or skip its reveal.
It uses the real bid limits and winner rules, but it doesn’t check positions.

Bids & Contract Value Score

25 rules

Draft bids

A bid names a player on the current board, an annual salary in whole millions, a length of 1 to 4 years, and whether it is guaranteed. Bids are guaranteed by default.
Salary runs from $2M up to the league’s maximum contract.
You need room under the 18-player draft limit to bid, even if an Active or Bench slot is empty.
A draft bid must leave $2M for each of your other open Active and Bench slots. G League picks need no reserve: once your 13 are full, you can bid up to your remaining cap.
A bid on a player who fits no open Active or Bench slot is judged as a G League win: it needs G League room, and the $2M stays reserved for each slot still open. Without G League room, that bid can’t win. If it wins and your players can shift to make room, he takes an Active or Bench slot instead of the G League.
You can hold up to 3 bids per round, or fewer if you have fewer places left under the 18-player draft limit.
Bidding again on the same player edits that bid. Withdrawing a bid frees it.
When you bid doesn’t matter. Timing never breaks a tie.

Contract Value Score

Every bid gets a Contract Value Score (CVS) from 0 to 100. The smallest bid, $2M for 1 year, scores 0. The maximum salary for 4 years scores 100.
Salary counts most. Each year adds value worth about 36% of the annual salary, up to the same as $3.33M per year once the salary reaches about $9.2M. A longer deal can beat a higher salary, but never one that pays more per year and more in total: a guaranteed $4M, 3-year bid beats a guaranteed $2M, 4-year bid.
A non-guaranteed bid’s score is divided by 4, so it can score at most 25.
CVS is rounded to one decimal. Bids with the same CVS are tied, even if their terms differ.
Example with a $165M cap and a 25% maximum: a guaranteed $20M, 3-year bid scores 51.8. The same bid non-guaranteed scores 13.0.
Drafts and Free Agency windows created before October 17, 2026 keep their earlier scoring, where every year was worth $3.33M per year at any salary, until they finish.

Who wins

The highest CVS wins. The winner signs exactly what they bid: salary, years, and guarantee.
In the draft, all of a round’s bids are decided in CVS order across every player on the board. A team can win several players in one round.
A draft bid wins only if, after the team’s earlier wins that round, the team stays within the 18-player limit and can afford the salary and reserve. The player must fit an open Active or Bench slot by position, or there must be G League room for him. Otherwise the bid is skipped, and a lower bid on that player can win.
On a tie, the team with more remaining cap wins. If that is tied too, a fixed random draw decides.
When bids on different players have the same CVS, the player earlier on the board is decided first.
A round’s winners fill as many open Active or Bench slots as they can fit together, with your players shifting to make room. The rest go to the G League when draft room remains beyond those slots.
Free Agency uses the same CVS and tie-breaks, with two differences. A team with Bird Rights on the player wins a tie before remaining cap is compared (see Bird Rights). And when bids on different players have the same CVS, a fixed random draw decides which player is decided first. There, a bid only has to fit within your remaining cap plus any cap its non-guaranteed collateral frees, with no $2M reserve for other slots.

Targets

A Target saves the salary, years, and guarantee you want to offer a player. Saving or clearing a Target never places or changes a bid.
Your team has one Target list per league, shared by the Draft Room, Free Agents, and player pages. Other teams can’t see it.
Target terms follow bid limits: whole millions from $2M to the league’s maximum contract, for 1 to 4 years. You can save up to 500 Targets.
Auto draft in the Initiation Draft bids at your Targets’ terms. See Initiation Draft.

Free Agency

56 rules

When it is open

Free Agency opens when the league’s Initiation Draft completes. Before that, and while an Initiation Draft is set up or running, nobody can add players.
After the Initiation Draft, managers add players only through Free Agency bids, Ten-Day Contracts, re-signing a player they dropped from a guaranteed contract, or Rookie Draft picks. There are no free pickups. The commissioner can also add a player directly.
Free Agency closes when the Championship ends and reopens when the next season’s Rookie Draft completes and its schedule is published.
A pickup freeze by the commissioner stops Ten-Day pickups and new Offer Windows. Bids in windows that are already open still work.
Your team can’t make Ten-Day pickups or place new bids while it has an IR player who isn’t Out or Out For Season, has more than 13 Active, Bench, and extra Bench players, or has been eliminated from the playoffs. The IR problem also blocks changing a bid.

Available players

A free agent is an active NBA player who isn’t on a team in your league. Players the NBA lists as inactive can’t be bid on or signed, but an existing bid can still win if the player becomes inactive.
There are no waivers. Any team can bid on a dropped or expired player right away, including the team that let the player go. Ten-Day pickups wait 24 hours. See Ten-Day Contracts.
The commissioner can put a hold on a player, which blocks Ten-Day pickups and new or changed bids for that player until it is lifted.
Players with an open Offer Window are listed first on Free Agents, unless All players is on.
All players also lists players on teams in your league and shows which team has them. My targets shows only your Targets, and My bids only players you’ve bid on. Only one of the three can be on at a time.

Offer Windows

The first bid on a free agent opens an Offer Window for that player. A player has at most one window at a time.
The window closes at the first 9 a.m. ET at least 48 hours after the first bid. A first bid Monday at 8 a.m. closes Wednesday at 9 a.m.; Monday at 10 a.m. closes Thursday at 9 a.m.
The close time never moves. Later bids don’t extend it, and bids after it are rejected.
Nobody can sign a player to a Ten-Day Contract while that player’s window is open or waiting to settle.
Windows settle a few minutes after they close, earliest close first, so a team’s earlier wins use its cap first. Bidding and withdrawing stop at the close time.
All of a league’s windows that close at the same time settle together, like a draft round: their bids are decided in CVS order across every player, and a team can win several players if it can afford them. A bid the team can no longer afford is skipped, and a lower bid on that player can win.
The maximum salary and the Show top bid CVS setting are locked in when a window opens.

Bidding

Every bid belongs to your own team. You can bid on as many players as you like.
Your team can have one bid per window. Bidding again on the same player changes that bid.
A bid has an annual salary in whole millions ($2M up to the window’s maximum), a length of 1 to 4 years, guaranteed or not, and may name a collateral player. It gets a Contract Value Score like a draft bid.
The salary must fit within your remaining cap for the current season, plus the salary of non-guaranteed collateral (see Collateral). Bids don’t reserve cap, so your bids together can add up to more than you have. A bid that no longer fits when the window settles can’t win.
You can change your bid until the window closes. After your team is eliminated from the playoffs, you can still change its terms but not its collateral.
You can withdraw a bid only within 1 hour of first placing it, and before the window closes. Changing the bid doesn’t restart that hour.
Withdrawing the last bid cancels the window. A new bid then opens a new window with a new close time.

Collateral

Collateral is a player you will drop if the bid wins: any of your Active, Bench, or G League players, but not IR. A Ten-Day player can be collateral only if their contract lasts past the window’s close.
Your open spots are your empty Active, Bench, and G League slots. IR never counts, and extra Bench players use them up. You can have as many bids without collateral as you have open spots when you bid. Every bid beyond that needs collateral.
One player can be collateral on any number of your bids. While locked as collateral, the player can’t be dropped, traded away, or moved to IR, but can move between Active, Bench, and G League.
When a bid with collateral wins, the collateral player is dropped under the usual drop rules, even if you had room. Your other bids naming him stay in, now without collateral.
Non-guaranteed collateral counts toward your cap room: at the cap, you can bid up to his salary, swapping him for the new player. If the bid wins, that salary comes off your cap right away, so your later bids settling at the same time can use any room left. Guaranteed collateral frees no cap room.
A winning bid always gets you the player, even if you filled a spot after bidding. He takes your first open spot, as described under Adding players. He goes to extra Bench only when Active, Bench, and G League are all full, or, rarely, when the G League is full and nobody can play your open Active slots. A winner placed in the G League needs a call-up to come up.

What you can see

Everyone sees that a window is open, when it closes, and how many bids it has. You see only your own bid. Nobody sees other teams’ terms, who bid, or who is leading.
With Show top bid CVS on, everyone also sees the highest bid’s Contract Value Score.
After a window settles, each bidder sees whether they won, plus the winning team and its terms. League Activity then lists every bid’s terms and Contract Value Score without saying who placed it, the same as the draft. Withdrawn bids aren’t shown.

Settlement

The highest Contract Value Score wins. On a tie, the team with Bird Rights on the player wins, then the team with more remaining cap, then a fixed random draw.
Windows that close at the same time settle together, highest CVS first across all their players, so a team’s higher-CVS wins use its cap first.
The winner signs exactly what they bid. The season that is current when the window settles is year 1.
If no bid is valid, the window closes with no winner and the player is available again.
A bid placed before a pickup freeze, an IR problem, or a playoff elimination can still win.
The commissioner can cancel a window, which voids every bid and releases all collateral.

Bird Rights

When a player’s full contract runs out at the end of a season, the team he was on gets Bird Rights on him. A team that traded for him gets them, because the contract moved with him.
Bird Rights win ties. If your bid has the same Contract Value Score as the highest bid on that player, you win him.
That is how you match an offer: reach the same CVS as the top bid, with any mix of salary, years, and guarantee, and you sign him on the terms you bid. A higher CVS still beats you.
Bids stay sealed. You see the score to match only when Show top bid CVS is on.
Bird Rights never let you go over the cap. Your bid has to fit like any other.
You get no Bird Rights on a player who was dropped or released before his contract ran out, or one you had only on a Ten-Day Contract.
Bird Rights last for one season. They end when the league continues to the season after that, or sooner once any team signs him to a full contract. Another team’s Ten-Day Contract doesn’t end them.
Free Agents shows which team holds Bird Rights on a player.
Bird Rights apply only in Free Agency, not in the Initiation Draft or Rookie Draft.

Ten-Day Contracts

A Ten-Day Contract signs a free agent right away, with no bid, no collateral, and no salary.
The player can’t have an open Offer Window or a commissioner hold.
For 24 hours after a player leaves any roster, no team can sign them to a Ten-Day Contract, including the team they left. Bids are still allowed. There is no cooldown while the playoffs are running.
You need an open spot, or you can drop one of your Active, Bench, or G League players with the pickup to make one. The player takes your first open spot, as described under Adding players, never IR or extra Bench.
A team can sign the same player to at most 2 Ten-Day Contracts per NBA season, counting contracts that ended early. The count resets July 1.
A Ten-Day Contract expires at the first 9 a.m. ET at least 10 days after signing, and the player returns to free agency.
A Ten-Day Contract can’t be turned into a full contract. To keep the player after it ends, win them in an Offer Window, or re-sign a guaranteed contract you dropped them from. See Dropping players and dead cap.
A Ten-Day player who is pledged as collateral stays until the bid settles, even past the expiry time.

Salary Cap & Contracts

30 rules

The salary cap

The salary cap follows the NBA, not a league setting: $165M for 2025–26 and 2026–27, and $176M for 2027–28 (projected).
A new cap season starts July 1 at 12 a.m. ET.
Salaries and the cap are in whole millions.
The cap is hard. Anything that would put your committed salary for the current season over the cap is blocked. Only commissioner corrections can go over it. There is no luxury tax and no salary floor.
Committed salary is every active contract covering the season plus dead cap, from every roster slot including IR and G League.
Only the current season is checked. Future seasons can go over the cap.
Any league member can view any team’s Cap Sheet.

Contracts

Contracts are guaranteed or non-guaranteed. A bid is guaranteed unless you choose otherwise.
Bids are at least $2M per year and run 1 to 4 seasons.
Salary is the same every season: no raises and no proration. The full salary counts in the first season, even when signed midseason.
Initiation Draft and Rookie Draft contracts start in the draft’s season. Free Agency contracts start in the season that is current when the Offer Window settles.
A contract’s salary, length, and guarantee never change after signing. A trade moves the contract unchanged.

Maximum contract

The commissioner sets the maximum contract as a percentage of the cap, from 1% to 100%. The default is 25%.
The maximum annual salary is the cap times that percentage, rounded up to a whole million: $42M at the default with a $165M cap.
The maximum applies to Initiation Draft and Free Agency bids only.
A draft locks in the maximum when it is created. Each Offer Window locks it in when its first bid opens the window.

Ten-Day Contracts

A Ten-Day Contract has no salary and doesn’t count against the cap.
Dropping a Ten-Day player ends the contract with no cap effect.

Dropping players and dead cap

Dropping a guaranteed contract keeps its full salary on your cap as dead cap for every season it covers.
Dropping a non-guaranteed contract clears it from your cap right away, this season included. It never leaves dead cap.
The team that dropped a player on a guaranteed contract can re-sign him on his old contract: same salary and the seasons it has left. His dead cap becomes his salary again. This works while his dead cap is still on your cap and until another team signs him, but not while an Offer Window on him is open or waiting to settle. Non-guaranteed contracts can’t be re-signed. Re-signing needs an open roster spot or a drop, and the team-wide limits on Ten-Day pickups, like a pickup freeze, apply to it too. The 24-hour wait and the Ten-Day limit per player don’t.
These rules apply to every release: drops, drops made to fit a pickup, collateral dropped when a Free Agency bid wins, and releases by the commissioner.
Dead cap counts against the cap like salary. It can’t be traded and ends after its last season.
During a season, your committed salary goes down only when you drop a non-guaranteed contract, trade a contract away, or the commissioner voids a contract or clears dead cap.

Commissioner corrections

The commissioner can void an active contract, which removes the player with no cap charge and cancels open trades that include that contract.
The commissioner can clear all remaining dead cap from a released contract.
After the Initiation Draft, the commissioner can add a free agent with no open Offer Window to any team, with any salary, length, and guarantee. The cap and maximum contract don’t block it.
The commissioner can add a free agent straight to IR regardless of injury status. A player on IR who isn’t Out or Out For Season still blocks that team’s Ten-Day pickups and new or changed Free Agency bids.
The commissioner can end a Ten-Day Contract early.
Every correction is recorded in the league’s admin activity.

Rosters & Lineups

46 rules

Roster slots

Every team has the same 23 slots: 10 Active, 3 Bench, 5 Injured Reserve (IR), and 5 G League. Leagues can’t change them.
Active slots are 3 Guard (G), 3 Forward (F), 2 Center (C), and 2 Utility (UTIL).
Bench, IR, and G League slots take any position.
A player can be on only one team in a league. There is no minimum roster size.

Positions

Positions come from the NBA data feed. A player listed at two positions, such as G-F, can fill a slot for either one.
G slots take guards, F slots take forwards, C slots take centers, and UTIL slots take any position.

Injured Reserve

Managers can put a player on IR only if the player is listed as Out or Out For Season.
A player who is no longer Out stays on IR until you move them. Nothing moves automatically.
While any IR player isn’t Out or Out For Season, your team can’t make Ten-Day pickups or place or change Free Agency bids.
To fix that, drop the player, move them to an open non-IR slot, or swap them with an injured player from your roster.
Moving a player off IR has no injury check.

G League

Managers can place any player in the G League, including players on Ten-Day Contracts.
Moving a player from the G League to Active, Bench, or IR uses one call-up. Moving a player into the G League is free, and doesn’t give a call-up back.
Each team gets the league’s call-up allowance every season: 20 by default. The commissioner can set it to any number, including 0, or Unlimited, until that season’s Initiation Draft or Rookie Draft starts.
Call-ups are free until the first Regular Season week starts. The count resets with each new league season.
No team can call a player up from the G League while the playoffs are running.

Moves, swaps, and drops

Only a team’s manager can move, swap, or drop its players, apart from commissioner changes. Any league member can view any team’s roster and lineups.
A move puts a player into an empty slot they are eligible for. Moving an IR or G League player to the Bench can shift your Active and Bench players to make room.
Swaps work between Active and Bench, between two Active slots, between IR and Active or Bench (the player going onto IR must be Out or Out For Season), and between the G League and Active or Bench (the player coming up uses a call-up). An injured G League player can also swap with an IR player who is no longer Out. Each player must be eligible for the slot they end up in.
Moves and swaps are allowed during the Initiation Draft. Drops are not allowed while an Initiation Draft is set up, running, or paused. During the Rookie Draft, moves, swaps, and drops are all allowed.
A roster change is rejected if any upcoming unlocked date couldn’t fit the roster, for example if more than 3 players would have to sit on the Bench.
A drop takes effect immediately. The player returns to free agency, any Ten-Day Contract ends, and open trades that include the player are cancelled.
Dropping a player has salary cap consequences. See Salary Cap & Contracts.
A player locked as collateral for a Free Agency bid can’t be dropped or moved to IR.

Adding players

A Ten-Day pickup can drop one of your Active, Bench, or G League players to make room.
A Free Agency win or Ten-Day pickup takes the first open spot the player can play: Active, then Bench, then G League. If no open Active or Bench slot fits him, your Active and Bench players can shift to make room before he goes to the G League. Never IR.

Extra Bench

Extra Bench is a spot beyond the 23 slots for a Free Agency win with no open spot he can take. Players placed there by earlier drafts stay until room opens or you move them.
Players left on extra Bench don’t score. Within the 13-player Active and Bench limit, you can select them for an eligible Active slot in a Daily Lineup.
Your roster only locks when Active, Bench, and extra Bench together hold more than 13 players. Until you clear the excess, you can’t make Ten-Day pickups or new Free Agency bids, edit lineups, swap roster placements or trade. You can drop any player, move eligible Active, Bench, or extra Bench players into open IR or G League slots, or move an injured G League player to IR to open a G League slot (this uses a call-up). You can still bid in the draft. IR and G League players do not count toward the 13.
Whenever room opens, the extra Bench player who has waited longest and fits takes it automatically.

Daily Lineups

Each fantasy day is a calendar date in Eastern Time.
You can set lineups for any date in a published Matchup Week your team plays in, as far ahead as the schedule goes. In playoff weeks, only teams with a matchup can set lineups.
A lineup lists your starters. Each starter must be on your Active or Bench roster and in an Active slot they are eligible for. Everyone else sits on the Bench, which holds at most 3.
A saved lineup carries forward to later dates until you save another one, within the same season. Saving a later date doesn’t change earlier ones.
On carried dates, newly added players start on the Bench. They take an open Active slot only when the Bench is full.
If a starter is dropped or moved to IR or the G League, they leave carried lineups and the remaining starters are re-placed into legal slots.
Until a saved lineup applies to a date, the players in your roster’s Active slots start, and moving players between Active and Bench changes who starts.
Lineups never change on their own for injuries or for players without a game.
Optimize week sets each date you can still edit in the Matchup Week you’re viewing, one date at a time, replacing what was saved for it. It starts as many of your Active and Bench players with an NBA game that day as positions allow, choosing higher season averages when they don’t all fit (last season’s when a player has none yet), and puts everyone else in a legal slot. It ignores injuries and never moves IR or G League players. Only the team’s manager can use it.
Only a team’s manager can set its lineup, apart from commissioner changes, which follow the same Day Lock.

Day Lock

Each date locks 5 minutes before that day’s first NBA tip-off, for the whole league at once. Postponed and canceled games don’t count.
The lock time follows NBA schedule changes until it passes. After that it is final.
A date with no NBA games never locks. Its lineup stays editable until the day ends.
After a date locks, nobody can change its lineup, including the commissioner.
A locked date uses your roster and lineup as they stood at the lock. Pickups, drops, and moves made after the lock take effect the next day.
Only players in Active slots at Day Lock score. Bench, IR, G League, and extra Bench players don’t.

Scoring & Matchups

29 rules

Fantasy points

Every league uses the same scoring. Leagues can’t change it.
Points scored: +1 each.
Field goals made: +1 each, on top of the points.
Missed field goals: −0.5 each.
Rebounds: +1 each.
Assists: +1 each.
Steals: +2 each.
Blocks: +2 each.
Turnovers: −1 each.
Three-pointers earn no bonus. Free throws count only as points. Missed free throws, fouls, minutes, and other stats score nothing.
In total, a made two is worth 3, a made three 4, a made free throw 1, and a missed field goal −0.5.
Scores can be negative. They are shown to one decimal place.

Which games count

A game counts on its scheduled date, even if it ends after midnight ET.
Two games on the same date add together. Stats follow the player, including after an NBA trade.
A postponed or canceled game scores nothing on its original date. A rescheduled game counts on its new date for whoever starts the player that day.
A player who doesn’t play, or whose NBA team has no game, scores 0.
Only players in Active slots at Day Lock count. A day’s points stay with the team whose locked lineup held the player, even if the player is traded or dropped later that day.

Daily results

Scores during a day are live and provisional. They can change with stat corrections.
Each day becomes official the next day between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET, once every game is final with a complete box score. If it isn’t ready by then, it tries again in that window each day, up to Weekly Settlement.
At close, scores are recalculated from the final box scores. After that, stat corrections don’t change the day.
Days with no NBA games, or where every game was postponed, become an official 0–0 once the day is over and its NBA schedule is confirmed.
Matchups and Schedule move on to the new day at 9 a.m. ET.

Weekly results

Each matchup is one Monday–Sunday week. The weekly score is the sum of the seven daily totals.
The higher weekly score wins. Equal scores are a tie, with no tiebreaker. In the playoffs, the higher seed advances on a tie.
A week settles at 9 a.m. ET on the Monday after it ends. A settled week is final, and nothing can change it.
Days still open at settlement use only box scores received by that cutoff. A game without a final result by then scores 0.
If a day’s lineups never locked, settlement rebuilds them as they stood at the lock time. If they can’t be rebuilt, that day counts 0–0 for both teams.

Projections

FPTS in player listings apply the same scoring to a player’s per-game averages (season, last 7 days, or last 30 days). They never affect matchups.
Projected points are an estimate only: official totals for closed days, current scores for earlier days still awaiting their official result, and, for each day left, the best lineup of your Active and Bench players with a game, by season average. Players without a season average are left out. Injuries and saved lineups are ignored.

Season, Standings & Playoffs

43 rules

Season calendar

Seasons are named by the year they start: 2026 is the 2026–27 season. The NBA season turns over July 1 at 12 a.m. ET.
A new league plays the NBA season that is current when the league is created.
Matchup Weeks run Monday 12 a.m. through Sunday 11:59 p.m. ET, back to back with no breaks.
Each season starts with a draft: the Initiation Draft in a league’s first season, and the Rookie Draft in every renewed season. The teams in the league when the Initiation Draft starts are the league’s teams for every season. The playoff format locks when each season’s draft starts.
The Regular Season starts with the first week that begins after the season’s draft completes and its schedule is published, and runs until the first playoff round. A late draft shortens the Regular Season; the playoff weeks don’t move. An Initiation Draft that finishes after the last Regular Season week has started pauses instead.
The playoffs always end in the calendar’s Championship Week, moved earlier by the league’s Playoff Start Offset.
A Private League’s commissioner can set the Playoff Start Offset to 0–3 weeks (default 0). It moves every playoff round earlier and takes the same number of weeks from the Regular Season. It locks when the season’s draft starts.

Schedule

The full schedule is created automatically when the season’s draft completes. Nobody picks matchups, and the schedule can’t be edited or regenerated.
The Regular Season is a round robin: each team plays every other team once per cycle, and cycles repeat until the Regular Season ends, so the last cycle may be partial.
With an odd number of teams, one team has a bye each week. Byes rotate, and bye counts differ by at most one between teams.
A bye is not a game. It adds no win, loss, tie, points for, or points against.
Any league member can view the full schedule.

Standings

Only Regular Season results count. Playoff games don’t change standings.
Teams are ranked by win percentage. A tie counts as half a win.
A team that hasn’t played yet ranks below every team that has.
Ties are broken by head-to-head win percentage among the tied teams, then total points for, then a fixed random draw set for the season. A tied team that hasn’t played the others ranks below the ones that have.
If head-to-head splits a tie of three or more teams, any group still tied reruns head-to-head among its own teams.
Points against and point differential are shown but never break ties.
Standings include a week only once it and every earlier week have settled.

Playoffs

Playoff spots equal the number of teams, up to 6.
Seeds come from the final Regular Season standings and are set once every Regular Season matchup has settled.
With 2 teams: a Championship, 1 vs 2.
With 3 teams: 2 vs 3 in the semifinal, and the winner plays 1 in the Championship.
With 4 teams: 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 in the semifinals.
With 5 teams: 4 vs 5 in the quarterfinal; 1 plays that winner and 2 plays 3 in the semifinals.
With 6 teams: 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5 in the quarterfinals; 1 plays the 4/5 winner and 2 plays the 3/6 winner in the semifinals.
There is no reseeding. Top seeds without a first-round game get a bye. Teams that miss the playoffs are eliminated.
Each round is one Monday–Sunday week. A round’s matchups appear once every matchup in the previous round has settled.
The winner advances. A tied playoff matchup goes to the higher seed.
The Championship winner is League Champion. There is no consolation bracket or third-place game.

Eliminated teams

While the playoffs are running, an eliminated team can’t move, swap, or drop players, sign Ten-Day Contracts, or place new Free Agency bids.
An eliminated team can’t be in a trade, and its open trades are cancelled when it is eliminated.
These limits end when the Championship ends.

End of season

When the Championship ends, every open Offer Window is cancelled, its bids are voided, and collateral is released.
After the Championship, Ten-Day pickups and Free Agency bids close league-wide until the next season’s schedule is published.

Renewing for next season

After the Championship, the commissioner renews the league for the next season with Continue to Next Season on League Admin’s League season card. Only a Private League’s commissioner can renew.
Renewal opens July 1 at 12 a.m. ET and closes October 10 at 12 a.m. ET, so October 9 is the last day to renew.
A league that isn’t renewed by the deadline can’t continue, that season or any later one.
Renewal is available from the 2027–28 season on.
Renewing schedules the league’s Rookie Draft for October 10 at 12 p.m. ET. See Rookie Draft.
Contracts that ended with the old season expire, and their players become free agents. Every other contract stays, and its player stays on the team.
Renewal expires every pending trade and every trade awaiting review. The Trade Window moves to the same dates a year later.
Each team gets its own picks for one more season. See Trades.

Rookie Draft

31 rules

Setup

Every renewed season starts with a Rookie Draft, scheduled for October 10 at 12 p.m. ET when the league renews.
Until that start time arrives, a Private League’s commissioner can move it to any future time from October 10 at 12 p.m. ET through the day before the NBA regular season opens.
The draft starts automatically at its scheduled time. It can’t be started early or paused.
Starting the draft locks in the season’s playoff format and G League call-up allowance. Teams carry over from last season.

Player pool

The pool is every active NBA player from this year’s NBA draft, plus undrafted players first listed as active after last season’s Championship Week on the calendar.
Players under contract or on a roster in your league, including Ten-Day players, aren’t in the pool.
The default order is NBA draft position, then undrafted players by last name and first name.
Everyone in the league can see the pool and watch the draft. The pool can change until the draft starts, then stays fixed.

Draft order

The draft has 2 rounds, with one slot per team in each. A team’s slots are its own 1st- and 2nd-round picks for this season.
Slots follow last season’s final Regular Season standings in reverse, so the last-place team picks first. Both rounds use the same order.
A traded pick keeps its original team’s slot. Whoever owns the pick when the draft starts makes it.
This season’s picks can be traded until the draft starts. See Trades.

On the clock

Each pick has a 2-minute clock, with no break between rounds. On the clock, you pick a rookie from the pool or pass. A pass uses up the pick with no player.
Only the team that owns a pick can make it. The commissioner can’t pick for another team.
A pick’s salary must fit under your cap, and you need room under the 18-player draft limit, which counts every player, including IR and extra Bench. The rookie is placed like an Initiation Draft win. See Initiation Draft.
If a pick you make fails, you stay on the clock with the same deadline. If the player is gone or doesn’t fit your roster, choose someone else, or move or drop players to make room. If the salary doesn’t fit, choosing someone else won’t help: drop a non-guaranteed contract to make cap room, pass, or the pick is skipped when time runs out.

Auto draft

Before the draft starts, you can rank rookies on the My Ranking tab. Your ranking locks when the draft starts.
Rookies you haven’t ranked, including ones added to the pool after you saved, follow your ranking in the default order.
With auto draft on, your pick is made from your ranking as soon as you’re on the clock. Auto draft is off by default. You can turn it on or off until the draft ends, and turning it on while you’re on the clock picks right away.
If time runs out, your pick is the first rookie in your ranking who fits your roster.
Only you can see your ranking and your auto draft setting. The board shows whether each pick was made by hand, by auto draft, or when time ran out.

Skipped picks

When time runs out, or auto draft is on, a pick is skipped if its salary doesn’t fit under your cap or no rookie left fits your roster.
Once the pool runs out, every remaining pick is skipped right away.
A skipped pick is used up with no player.

Rookie contracts

Each pick signs its rookie right away to a 4-year, non-guaranteed contract that starts this season, with the same salary every year.
The salary comes from the pick’s slot and the salary cap for the season being drafted, not from the player. Every 2nd-round pick earns the $2M minimum.
In the 1st round, salaries fall evenly from 8% of the cap for the 1st pick to 2% for the 12th, rounded to the nearest million and never below $2M. Leagues with fewer than 12 teams use the first slots of that scale.
Example with the projected $176M 2027–28 cap: the 1st pick earns $14M, then $13M, $12M, $11M, $10M, $9M, $8M, $7M, $6M, $5M, $4M, and $4M for the 12th.
Dropping a rookie follows the usual rules for non-guaranteed contracts. See Salary Cap & Contracts.

After the draft

The draft ends once every pick is made, passed, or skipped. The season schedule is then published and Free Agency reopens.
Rookies nobody picked become free agents.

Trades

58 rules

Trade Window

Proposing, countering, accepting, and approving trades work only inside the league’s Trade Window. It opens at its start time and closes at the trade deadline.
New leagues open the window September 1 at 12 a.m. ET. The deadline is 3 p.m. ET on the first Thursday in February.
A Private League’s commissioner can change both dates. Both must fall in the league’s current NBA season, the opening must come before the deadline, and the deadline must be in the future.
Once the deadline passes, the window can’t be changed again that season.
Trades open only after the league has completed an Initiation Draft.
Withdrawing, declining, and vetoing don’t need an open Trade Window or a completed draft.
At the deadline, every pending trade and every trade awaiting the commissioner expires. Nothing moves. A Public League trade already in its league vote isn’t affected and still goes through when the vote ends.

Who can trade

Only team managers can propose a trade, and their own team must be in it.
Only the other teams in the trade can accept, counter, or decline. Only the proposing team can withdraw.
In a Private League, only the commissioner can approve or veto a trade, including a trade involving their own team.
While the playoffs are running, a team that has been eliminated can’t be in a trade.
If any team in a trade has more than 13 Active, Bench, and extra Bench players, the trade can’t be proposed, countered, accepted, or approved until that team clears the excess.

What can be traded

Players and draft picks. Nothing else can be traded.
A player can be traded from any roster slot, including IR and G League, as long as your team holds the player’s active contract.
A traded player’s contract moves unchanged: salary, years, and guarantee.
Dead cap can’t be traded. It stays with the team that released the player.
Players on Ten-Day Contracts can’t be traded.
A player locked as collateral for one of your Free Agency bids can’t be traded away until the lock is released.
Every team gets its own 1st- and 2nd-round picks for each of the next three seasons. Each renewal adds picks for one more season, so after renewal every team has picks for the new season and the three after it.
Any pick your team owns for the current season or the next three can be traded, including picks acquired in other trades.
Draft picks don’t count against the salary cap.
Current-season picks stay tradeable until the league’s Rookie Draft starts. Then they lock, and open trades that include them can no longer go through.

Building a trade

A trade has 2 or 3 teams. Every team must send at least one player or pick and receive at least one.
Each player or pick can appear in a trade only once.
Proposals, counters, and declines can include a message of up to 280 characters. Only managers of the teams in the trade can read it.

Accepting, countering, and approval

The proposing team approves its own trade automatically. The trade is accepted once every other team accepts. In a Private League it then waits for the commissioner; in a Public League it goes to a league vote.
One decline ends the whole trade, even in a three-team trade where another team already accepted.
A team that already accepted can still decline or counter while the trade waits on another team.
A counter keeps the same teams but can change what moves. It closes the original trade, the countering team becomes the proposer, and every other team must accept again.
The proposing team can withdraw only until every team has accepted.
Proposals don’t expire on their own. They stay open until someone acts on them, they’re cancelled, or the deadline passes.
In a Private League, every trade needs the commissioner’s approval. Nothing is approved automatically, and there is no review period.
Approving completes the trade. Vetoing ends it, and nothing moves.

League vote in public leagues

A Public League has no commissioner approval. Once every team in a trade accepts, the league has 2 days to vote on it. Nothing moves during the vote.
Every team not in the trade can veto it once and can take the veto back until the vote ends. Teams in the trade can’t vote.
Votes are anonymous. Everyone sees how many vetoes the trade has and how many cancel it, but nobody sees who vetoed. Not voting counts as approving.
Vetoes from half of the teams not in the trade, rounded up and never fewer than 2, cancel the trade at once. With 6 teams that’s 2 vetoes; with 12 teams it’s 5.
Otherwise the trade goes through when the 2 days end, with the same cap and roster checks as an approval, even if the trade deadline passed during the vote.
If those checks fail when the vote ends, the trade is cancelled and nothing moves.
Dropping a player in the trade, contract corrections, playoff elimination, and season rollover still cancel a trade during its vote.

Cap and roster checks

To propose or accept, your team must be at or under the salary cap for the current season after the trade, counting dead cap.
To approve, or to go through after a league vote, every team in the trade must be at or under the salary cap after the trade, counting dead cap.
There is no exception for shedding salary. A trade that leaves a team over the cap is rejected even if that team’s salary goes down.
At approval, each team’s incoming players must fit its open Active and Bench slots plus the slots its outgoing players free. Players leaving from IR or the G League free no Active or Bench room.
Incoming players must also be position-eligible for a slot. The team’s Active and Bench players shift to make room when they can. If no arrangement fits, the team must make room, by dropping players or moving them to IR or the G League, before the trade can be approved.
Approval rechecks everything: each player is still on the sending team with the same contract, no Ten-Day Contract or collateral lock, and each pick is still owned and tradeable. In a Private League, if anything changed, approval fails and the trade keeps waiting for the commissioner, unless the change cancelled it. See Cancelled trades. In a Public League, the same checks run when the vote ends, and a trade that fails them is cancelled.

Completion

When a trade is approved, or its league vote ends without enough vetoes, every player and pick moves at once.
Incoming players go automatically into open Active or Bench slots they are eligible for. If none fits, as few Active and Bench players as possible shift to make room.
A traded pick changes owner but keeps its original team.

Cancelled trades

When a trade is accepted by every team, other open trades that include any of the same players are cancelled.
When a trade is approved, other open trades that share any of its players or picks are cancelled.
Dropping or releasing a player, or the commissioner voiding the player’s contract, cancels every open trade that includes that player.
When a team is eliminated from the playoffs, its open trades are cancelled.

Who sees what

Pending trades are visible only to managers of the teams in them. A commissioner outside the trade doesn’t see them.
Trades awaiting review or in a league vote, and completed trades, appear in league activity for everyone.
Declined, withdrawn, countered, vetoed, expired, and cancelled trades stay visible only to the teams in them.
Managers of teams in a trade get a notice when someone else declines it, counters it, or the commissioner or a league vote approves or vetoes it.
New proposals and counters are emailed to the other teams in the trade. Once every team accepts, the whole league gets an email.