Update Preview: Hardwood Basketball Manager adds international leagues next week

Hardwood's first international leagues live in Spain, and they work a bit differently from the NHA American pro league. No salary cap. No draft. You sit in the president's chair at a club with a budget, and the only ways to get a player are to buy him, borrow him, or talk him into signing. The only ways to lose one are to sell him, let his deal run out, or watch somebody pay his release clause.

A budget, not a cap
There is no cap number to stay under. There is a budget, and wages, running costs, and transfer fees all come out of it. The league verifies your books instead of policing a cap, so the punishment for overspending is not a tax bill, it is failing verification. Finishing last does not hand you a high pick either. Finishing last drops you a division.

Every player has a price
Transfers are club to club, for cash. Talks run both directions: rival clubs table bids for your players and vice-versa. You can hold out for more or push hard for a better number, but a proud seller has a ceiling in his head, and pushing past it makes him walk away and perhaps go cold on you.

The release clause
Every contract carries one. It is not a wall, it is the ceiling on what that player costs, and it is meant to be paid. Meet it and the selling club has no say in the matter. That is why clubs here cannot hold their best players, and it is why yours are never really safe. Negotiate a bigger clause when you sign him and you pay for it in wages.

He still has to agree
A fee agreed is not a deal done. The player weighs the role you are offering him, the minutes that come with it, the wage and the length of the contract. Insult him and no amount of money fixes it. The clause is yours to pay, but he will not come. What you promised him is also remembered: sell a man on a starting job and then bury him, and he will make it your problem.

How the money is paid
Fees can be paid up front, or split 60/40, or spread 50/25/25 across two years. You can bolt on a bonus that only pays out if he plays enough games. Deferred money is debt, it sits on your books, and it comes due whether or not the season went the way you hoped. Sellers discount money they have to wait for, so a structured bid can carry a bigger headline number than a cash one. The AI clubs work all of this too, so a rival with no cash can still outbid you.

Loans
A loan moves the player without moving the contract. You split his wage with the other club, and you can attach an option to buy him later or an obligation that triggers on its own.

Four divisions and a trapdoor
Seventy-eight clubs across four tiers, with clubs going up and down at every boundary. Winning promotion to the top flight is not enough by itself. A promoted club also has to clear a budget check and post an entry deposit, and one that cannot is denied while a relegated club gets reprieved into the spot it earned. For most of the pyramid the promotion and relegation race is the whole season.

Reserve sides and the affiliate list
Big clubs own reserve teams further down the pyramid, and clubs without one sign agreements with a lower club instead. Take full control of your B-Team's lineups and send/recall players to optimize rosters, or establish a link with an independent club for mutual benefit.

The academy
Every July your academy graduates a class. If there is no room for them, you decide who stays and who gets paid off, and paying a player off costs real money. If you cannot afford it, he keeps his place and the kid looks elsewhere.

The cups
Two of them, both worth money. The Copa de España takes the top seven clubs at the halfway point plus the host, and settles it over four days in one arena in February. The Supercopa is last season's champion, cup winner, runner up and host, over a single weekend before the regular season starts from year 2 forward. The draw is a real draw, and the host plays every tie at home.

Losing players you developed Contracts run out, and a player who ends up in the free pool asks for less every day he sits there, so waiting him out is a strategy and so is losing him to a club that did not wait. You can lodge a qualifying offer to keep first refusal if a rival comes in. And when you develop someone genuinely elite while he is still young, he declares for the NHA draft.