NBA pools
An NBA pool is the one competition where the schedule itself is the edge. Back-to-backs, rest days and the NBA Cup all sit inside the same 82 games, and the Raptors are only one of the 30 teams your office will argue about. Fixtures and scoring run automatically, in your branding.
Free to start. No credit card.
The NBA does not have weeks. It has a calendar with roughly a dozen games most nights. A pool week can be a calendar week, a single night's slate, or a fixed number of matchups you choose. Most organizers run weekly slates with a Monday deadline, which turns a continuous season into something with a rhythm.
Tip-offs, lock countdowns and reminders show in each player's time zone. A 7:30pm tip in Toronto is 4:30pm in Vancouver, so the West Coast half of your office can still pick before the late afternoon games lock. Game-level locks handle that without anyone doing the arithmetic.
West Coast games end after midnight in the east. Results score as each one ends, and the standings are already right by the time Toronto opens its phone on the way to work.
Basketball breaks the assumption that the team you picked on Monday is the team that plays on Tuesday. Almost every scoring problem in an NBA pool comes back to who is actually on the floor.
Stars sit out games they are fit for. A matchup that looked one-sided when the week opened can flip when an inactive list drops an hour before tip-off. If your locks sit at tip-off, informed players hold a real advantage over the people who filled their card on Sunday night. That is either a feature or a fairness problem, and you should decide which before October rather than in January.
Teams play on consecutive nights, often in different cities. The second night of a road back-to-back is measurably harder than the first, and it is visible in the schedule months in advance. In a season where little else is predictable, the travel calendar is the one repeatable signal, and the players who read it will win your pool.
NBA scores run past a hundred and margins spread wide, so a margin prediction is a real weekly scoring mechanic rather than a season tiebreaker. This is the one pool where you can score margin every week and have it separate the field honestly. Try the same thing on NHL games decided by one goal and it tells you nothing.
Friday group-stage games in November are regular season games and tournament games at the same time. Decide whether your pool scores them once, as ordinary games, or runs the Cup as a separate short competition on top. Running it separately gives you a five week pool inside the season, which is a genuinely good hook for an office that will not commit to 82 games.
Overtime resolves every game. There is no loser point to argue about and no draw to score, and the settings that actually matter are your week definition, your lock timing relative to the inactive list, and whether margin is scored weekly.
Group a week of games into one slate with a single deadline. The format that turns a continuous 82 game season into something an ordinary office can actually keep up with.
Pick the night's games as they come, with per-game locks. The right shape for an office that watches basketball rather than checks the score.
Five weeks from the end of October to a single championship game in December. A short, self-contained competition for people who will not sign up for a six month season.
Sixteen teams, four rounds, best of seven. Fill it out in April, then watch it survive until June. The bracket that brings back everyone who stopped picking around the All-Star break.
A nightly calendar becomes a weekly pool, or a nightly one, or a slate you choose. The format bends to your office rather than the other way around.
White label on every paid plan. Pro and above add a custom domain and a custom email sender, so a pool about an American league still arrives entirely in your branding.
Tip-off times, locks and reminders follow each player's own time zone, so a pool that runs from Halifax to Vancouver never asks anyone to convert a time or pick against a deadline that was set for somebody else.
October to June, with the NBA Cup in November and the playoffs in April. Three distinct hooks in one season, all running on the same hub with the same player list.
Free to start. No credit card.
Want a winter sport with a loser point to argue about? See NHL pick'em →