FAQ

Yes. Draft Duel is free to play, with no purchases, subscriptions or paid upgrades.

No. You only choose a coach name. Your browser keeps a guest session so you can come back to a room, but there is no sign-up, email or password.

Yes. Create a private room, send your friend the invite link or six-character room code, and you draft and play head to head in real time. Each room holds exactly two coaches. There is no public matchmaking with strangers.

Yes — choose Play vs CPU on the home page and pick Rookie, All-Star or Hall of Fame. The CPU coach drafts from the same rolls you see, follows the same roster rules, pick clock and timeout limit, and gets no hidden rating boosts; higher difficulties simply make better decisions. Games against the CPU are recorded separately from games between people.

The draft takes at most 4 minutes (16 picks × 15 seconds) and is often quicker. The game itself takes about 4½ minutes: four 45-second quarters plus short coaching breaks, a little longer with timeouts or overtime. A full match is usually under ten minutes.

Each pick starts with a random franchise and decade, and you choose from up to six players who played for that franchise in that decade. The draft is a snake draft, so the order alternates A-B-B-A. The full rules are in How to Play.

A player can show up under more than one franchise and decade — wherever he played — but he can only be drafted once per match. Once either coach drafts him, he is gone for both.

Each player has one overall rating for his career, calculated from publicly available statistics: his best three seasons of Box Plus/Minus and Win Shares per 48 minutes, his career Value Over Replacement Player, and honours such as All-Star and All-NBA selections. Players are ranked on that blend and placed on the game’s 56–99 scale. Ratings are a game-design choice, not an official ranking, and may be refined over time.

Yes. Draft Duel runs in the browser and is designed for phones (including iPhone Safari) as well as desktops. There is nothing to install.

In the lobby, a disconnected coach keeps their seat for 2 minutes. During the draft, the server makes the pick when that coach's clock runs out, so the draft always finishes. During the game, play continues with the coach's last lineup and strategy. Reopening the room link reconnects you.

Yes — a football version is planned next. There is no release date yet; it will be announced on this site when it is ready.

No. Draft Duel is an independent game. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the NBA, its teams or its players. Team and player names are used only to identify them.