Hoopplan is a simulation of National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball. You are the coach of an NBA club, taking your team through the regular season, trying to reach and win the NBA Finals.
In Hoopplan we try to make the game work the same way as in real life, with realistic decisions to be made about team coaching and management. The choices you make are the same as you’d have to make in real life. Sometimes you’ll have to make tough decisions, whether to sign better players, or develop your stadium and income sources to improve your future finances.
In addition to the management decisions about signing and cutting players you’ve also got to shuffle your lineups from game to game. You’ve injuries to contend with, as well as players losing form. You have to decide which players to play, when to play them and who to bring in from the bench when you rest the starters. You also have to decide on tactics for every single game.
Hoopplan is a mixture of a management and coaching game, featuring “game-day” coaching aspects as well as longer-term roster building aspects (including management of the salary cap). For those looking for a mixture of a coaching game and a roster-building game Hoopplan could be just the game you’re looking for.
Hoopplan runs all year round – the game isn’t a “fantasy game” based on the performances of real life players in the NBA – it’s a simulation of how real life Basketball works – much more involved, and we think, much more fun. Turns are normally run every two weeks to give you plenty of time for planning and analysis.
Your objective is to win the NBA Finals against teams run by other players drawn from all over the country (and around the world). Each league contains twenty eight teams, divided into two conferences, each of which has two divisions with seven teams in each. During each turn you play five games against teams within your league.
You have to make a mixture of decisions: both “playing” decisions and “management” decisions are both are equally important to a basketball coach.
Hoopplan runs all year round – the game isn’t a “fantasy game” based on the performances of real life players in the NBA – it’s a simulation of how real life Basketball works – much more involved, and we think, much more fun. Turns are normally run every two weeks to give you plenty of time for planning and analysis.
Each team has as an “active” roster (the players available for selection every game) of exactly twelve players, plus a number of players in reserve, playing in minor basketball leagues, who can be promoted to the active roster when required. Your roster will comprise a mixture of centers, forwards and guards.
Each player is rated according to sixteen different skills: long shooting, close shooting, defense, passing, dribbling, blocking and so on. These abilities determine his effectiveness and performance during a game. The better a player’s skills are the more effective he will be, but the higher his wage demands will tend to be.
Hoopplan is as much about financial management as coaching, mirroring the real life salary cap – you can’t build a “superteam” because you’ve only got limited finances, so the key to success is getting the best value for money out of your roster.
Each turn you have to decide on your depth chart. Your starters cannot play a full game so you have to decide who to bring in from the bench when you need to replace them, and how much to play your starters (if you overplay them they get tired, and become less effective).
You also determine when each player will take the opportunity to attempt a shot. In Basketball most players make 50% of their attempts – the better shooters score more points because they attempt more shots, taking on the most difficult chances – a good shooter isn’t measured by the percentage of shots he makes, but the number of shots he is able to make and still maintain around a 50% success rate.
Your team needs to have a balance of skills. There’s no point in building a team full of superstar shooters. You need to be able to create decent chances for your shooters, play defence, win the ball and so on. Nor can you run your stars into the ground by overplaying them. You have find a balance between winning and leaving your players fresh enough to be successful during the playoffs, so depth amongst your roster is critical, ensuring you’ve got quality reserves who can come in every game and allow your stars to rest and save their energy without losing the games.
In addition to these “game-day” decisions you’ve also got to make roster decisions and financial decisions. You can sign free-agents, or make trades with other coaches. Whilst on the free agent list players’ values (and their wages) drop, so you’ll commonly find you’ll need to leave some of your over-priced veterans on the free-agent list and then resign them when their demands have dropped to more realistic levels. Other teams may sign them in the meantime but if you lose a player to another team you do get compensation.
All of these financial decisions are made within the restrictions of the salary cap, which ensures that a team cannot have a wage bill too high, or restricts who they can sign if their wage bill goes over the salary cap.
At the end of the regular season the top eight teams in each conference (in fact the two divisional winners plus the six next best teams, known as “wild cards”) move forward into the playoffs. These are played over four rounds, the first round best-of-five games and the remaining rounds best-of-seven games, to determine the NBA Finals winners. Teams that fail to make the playoffs, or are eliminated during the playoffs play in a Consolation competition or play pre-season games, readying themselves for the following season.
During the playoffs each team participates in the college draft, signing new talent to their rosters. These are usually “promising” players packed with potential who’ll need a season or two to mature. At the end of each season each player is also assessed for gaining or losing abilities. This is dependent upon a player’s “potential” – a player loses one point of potential each season. A player with lots of potential is likely to gain skills quickly, particularly if his form during the season was good. A player with no potential will start to lose skills. Either way, players’ wage demands increase as they get older so you’ll need to decide whether a player is continuing to provide value for money.
Each turn you’ll receive over a dozen pages of reports: a full roster listing with current form, injury details, lineups and so on, plus detailed stats for all of your players. You’ll also receive game reports and full box-scores for all games you played, and outline reports on all games played in your league that turn, as well as details of free agent signings, trades, injuries and all the other news you’ll need from around the league.
There are also many optional stats listings which you can choose to receive, though the extra listings won’t give you an advantage over other coaches (though they may well increase your enjoyment of the game). Many of these stats listings are regularly issued as part of the standard reports.
Normally reports are sent to you by email, so you’ll have your result within minutes of the game being played, but players can receive their results by post if they wish.
There are half a dozen games of Hoopplan already running in the UK. All run with two week deadlines (so you’ve fourteen days between turns). We have positions available in most of these games that will allow you to start play immediately (as in real-life, you take over a team and try to turn their fortunes around).
Turnfees in Hoopplan are £28.00 for ten and £50.00 for twenty.
Your instructions are normally sent through our active website, but can also be sent by post if required.
To join Hoopplan please email Danny McConnell with your team preferences (the more the better, real-life NBA teams) then we’ll be able to get you started in a game even more quickly. Just quote the FREESTART option and your setup and first two turns are free.