Continental Hoop Association·Est. 1973·Vol. I, No. 1·New pool printed 00:00 UTC·Free forever
The Daily Rival — one pool, one world, one run
Hoop Rivals is a basketball card game in a browser tab. Every day the press invents 12 players — face, ratings, nickname, a legend nobody can fact-check — and every coach on earth gets the same 12.
Draft 5. Play 3 rivals. About 12 minutes. Your result card lands in a group chat and somebody says they’d have drafted better.
The press is still setting the first pool.
No account, no email, nothing to sign up for.
Vanderkamp
C7'0"
Montoya
G6'2"
Ellington
F6'6"
3 of the 12 printed for this specimen sheet
Why the league exists
A fan who wants to argue about a roster has two choices. Console collection grinds built on real stars, real accounts and real money sinks. Or free browser sims that are magnificent spreadsheets: ratings tables, no faces, an hour a session.
What a fan actually chases is a player nobody can verify. A legend with a nickname and a mustache. That has no cheap, instant home, so it ends up in a Reddit thread.
Make the players fictional and let the press invent them. No licences, no real stars, no grind — and a card worth showing somebody. The game is small on purpose: 5 picks, 3 games, one sitting.
Then the part that makes a single-player game feel like a league: everybody drafts the same pool on the same day. One run each. Your rank is against the world on identical cards.
Nothing in here can be bought, farmed or looked up
Every player is printed fresh. There is no rare card, no odds table, no star to chase. The only edge is reading the pool better than the coach who sent you the link.
One press run, one planet
At 00:00 UTC the press sets a new pool. Every coach in the world drafts from it. One run each. That is what makes a score comparable, and an argument possible.
Specimen pool, set by hand for this sheet. The real one prints daily.
Card fronts, 1973-74 stock
Each card carries a portrait on grainy stock, ratings in mono, and a one-paragraph legend nobody alive can check. Read the paragraph, then decide whether the numbers are lying to you.
CHA 1973-74“The Switchblade”
| HANDLE | 91 | |
|---|---|---|
| SHOT | 78 | |
| PASS | 84 | |
| DEFENSE | 66 | |
| LEGS | 88 |
Ran numbers out of a bowling alley in Corpus Christi until a Stevedores scout lost $40 to him. Signed the same night, in the parking lot, on the back of a scorecard. Nobody has taken the ball off him since.
CHA 1973-74“The Freight”
| POST | 89 | |
|---|---|---|
| BOARDS | 93 | |
| SHOT | 41 | |
| DEFENSE | 80 | |
| LEGS | 52 |
Loaded freight on the Norfolk docks for 9 winters before anybody thought to measure him. Boxes out like a man moving a piano, and shoots like one too. Has never been moved off the block by fair means.
CHA 1973-74“Sunday”
| SHOT | 94 | |
|---|---|---|
| HANDLE | 62 | |
| PASS | 70 | |
| DEFENSE | 58 | |
| LEGS | 61 |
Taught Sunday school in Fort Smith and shot 400 free throws before the doors opened. Turned professional at 31 because the church roof wanted $900. Has not missed from the left elbow since Mar 4.
The golden path
No tutorial. No difficulty picker. No signup in front of it.
One tap, once, forever. 12 CHA clubs, each with a city and one quirk. Your banner rides on every screen after it.
The pool is face up and identical for every coach on earth today. Rivals claim players between your picks, so the board shrinks while you read.
Each possession you commit one card against a face-down defender. Both flip together. Matchup, ratings and a roll decide the bucket.
Record, differential, your rank against every coach on today's pool, and the standout line. Built to be pasted into an argument.
The moment the game works
Game 1 ends and the numbers print. Somebody the press invented this morning has a real line in a real box score, drafted by you, out of the same 12 everyone else got.
Mar 12 — game 1 of 3
| Player | Pos | Pts | Reb | Ast | FG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MONTOYA, P. | G | 34 | 4 | 9 | 12-19 |
| ELLINGTON, D. | F | 22 | 3 | 2 | 8-14 |
| BASSETT, L. | G | 18 | 2 | 4 | 7-16 |
| HOLLIS, V. | G | 12 | 5 | 6 | 4-9 |
| DUPREE, H. | C | 12 | 15 | 1 | 5-11 |
| TEAM | 98 | 29 | 22 | 36-69 |
Montoya took the last 4 possessions himself and Tidewater never saw the ball again.
Specimen — not a real run| # | Franchise | Rec | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ozark Drifters | 3-0 | +41 |
| 2 | Gulf Coast Stevedores | 3-0 | +33 |
| 3 | Cascade Loggers | 3-0 | +19 |
| 4 | Tidewater Ironsides | 2-1 | +22 |
| 5 | Rio Grande Vaqueros | 2-1 | +14 |
| 6 | Steel City Foundrymen | 2-1 | +8 |
| 7 | Great Lakes Freighters | 2-1 | +3 |
| 8 | Sonora Prospectors | 1-2 | −6 |
| 9 | Blue Ridge Millhands | 1-2 | −11 |
| 10 | Delta Riverboats | 1-2 | −17 |
Everyone on this ladder drafted the same 12 players. That is the whole argument, and it resets at midnight.
The one paid thing
The Daily Rival is free forever and always will be. If you want the league at home, the pass is a single payment. There is nothing recurring and nothing to cancel.
Not on sale yet. The pass opens when the league tips off.
Continental Hoop Association — commissioner’s notice
The first pool prints soon and it will be free to draft. Keep the address. Send it to the person who will tell you they’d have drafted better.