How to play Hardwood Legends
The complete guide · updated 18 September 2026
Hardwood Legends is a free arcade-sim basketball game that runs in your browser: 1v1, 3v3 and full 5v5, a career mode where you build one player from a rookie, a walkable park, and online games with friends by lobby code. There is nothing to install and no account. You need a computer with a keyboard: there are no touch controls yet, so it can't be played on a phone or tablet. This guide covers everything the game does, from your first possession to building a player who wins playoff games.
Your first game
The first time you open the game you build a player: name, position, height, jersey number, look and an archetype. Then you pick the club you sign with, and you're dropped straight into a real game against the CPU. That game is the tutorial. There is no empty practice gym to sit through. Instead, whenever a mechanic is the right answer to what's happening on the floor, the game slows down, tells you the key, and speeds back up once you've used it.
Lessons arrive in roughly the order you'll need them. Movement comes first, then passing when a team-mate is open, the crossover when a defender is mirroring you, contests and steals on defense, and so on. At most three lessons come each quarter, so most of the game is still just basketball. Nothing can be failed: if you ignore a prompt, the game carries on at full speed after a few seconds.
Controls
These are the defaults. Every one of them can be changed on the Controls screen, which also switches between the Simple scheme (the default), where the arrow keys do every dribble move, and Advanced, which shows a separate key for each move. The keys from both schemes work whichever one is showing.
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Move | W A S D |
| Sprint | Shift |
| Shoot or dunk: hold, then release | Space |
| Pass to whoever is best placed | E |
| Pass to a position (1 = point guard … 5 = centre) | 1–5 |
| Dribble move: the arrow you press picks it | Arrow keys |
| Crossover · spin · stepback · sidestep (Advanced) | C Z V X |
| Fake: a hesitation on the move, a pump fake standing still | R |
| Pump fake (Advanced) | Q |
| Steal (on defense) | E, or F |
| Switch to another player (on defense) | Tab |
| Pause | Esc |
By default the camera sits behind your player, looking toward the basket your team is attacking, the way 2K's end-court view does, so up is toward that basket. When the ball changes hands it swings round to the other end. Settings also has a side-on broadcast camera.
Shooting and the meter
Hold Space to rise into your shot and a meter fills beside your player. Let go when it reaches the marked point, about 70% of the way up, and the meter flashes green. With the default settings (Perfect release = auto make on, and meter shot timing rather than Assisted), a green release always goes in. Release early or late and the shot still counts. It just becomes a roll of the dice, weighted by how close you were and everything below.
- Your rating sets the speed. A player with a high three-point rating gets a slower, easier meter from deep than one who rarely shoots them. The same goes for mid-range and close shots.
- Tired legs rush it. Below about a third of your stamina the meter runs faster, so greens get harder exactly when you've been sprinting all quarter.
- Space matters more than anything. How open you are decides a jumper. An open look barely loses anything, while a hand in your face costs a lot. Use a move to create space first.
- Range. Past the arc and deeper, even a good release falls off quickly. Heaves from your own half are for the buzzer only.
Close to the rim, holding Space while driving turns the shot into a layup or dunk, depending on your dunk rating, your speed and how much room there is. Free throws use the same meter, with no defender and no clock.
Dribble moves
Moves are how you beat a defender one-on-one. Each takes a moment to perform and has a short cooldown, so timing beats spamming. A move made while the defender is mirroring you, matching your feet, is the one that sends them stumbling.
With the Simple scheme, press an arrow key and the direction picks the move: toward the basket to spin past, away from it to step back, and across you for a crossover (or a sidestep when you're moving fast).
Crossover C
Switches the ball to your other hand and changes direction. Use it when a defender is shading one way. It's the quickest move and the easiest to chain.
Spin Z
Turns you around your defender. It's slower to start, but it carries you past a defender who's pressed up on you, which makes it the move for getting to the rim.
Stepback V
Hops away from the defender to create room for a jumper. Shoot straight out of it, before they recover.
Sidestep X and hesitation R on the move
The sidestep slides you laterally out of a crowded lane. The hesitation is a hard stop-and-go that freezes a defender who is backpedalling, and it combines well with a sprint afterwards.
Passing
E passes to a nearby open team-mate, favouring whoever is in the direction you're pushing, and never to someone behind you when you're steering. For a specific player, press their position number: 1 is the point guard, 2 the shooting guard, 3 the small forward, 4 the power forward and 5 the centre. A number never passes to yourself.
Passes can be intercepted. A long pass across a defender's lane is a turnover waiting to happen, so move the ball quickly and to the side the defense isn't leaning toward. Assists pay coins, and in MyCareer they pay a lot of XP.
Defense
- Stay between your man and the basket. Your player defends automatically when you stop steering, but you choose where the pressure goes.
- Contest shots. Being close with a hand up when the shooter releases is what lowers their percentage. You don't need to block it to change it.
- Steal (E or F) carefully. A well-timed poke at the dribble takes the ball. A reckless one is a reach-in foul, and six fouls end a player's night.
- Blocks come from jumping (Space on defense) at a shooter or a player finishing at the rim. Leaving your feet early gets you beaten on a pump fake.
- Switch (Tab) to control whichever of your team-mates is nearest the ball, and take over the defender who is actually in the play.
Stamina and sprinting
Sprinting (Shift) is faster but drains stamina, and so do moves and jumps. The bar under your player card shows it. A tired player moves slower, finishes worse and gets a rushed shot meter, and an empty tank means a short spell of being winded. Walk the ball up, save sprints for the fast break and the drive, and you'll have legs in the fourth quarter. The CPU plays by the same rules, which is why its players stop sprinting everywhere late in games.
Game modes
Play: 1v1, 3v3 and 5v5
Pick any two of the 30 clubs and go. 1v1 and 3v3 are half-court, first to 21, with a 14-second shot clock. 5v5 is full court with four quarters, a 24-second shot clock, fouls and free throws. Quarter length and difficulty are in Settings. There's also the Gym: an empty court with unlimited shots and no clock, for practising your release.
MyPark
A walkable outdoor park with courts. Walk onto a free pad and press Space to claim it, and a game tips off when every pad on that court is taken. It's player-only, so everyone you see there is a real person connected with you. There's also a chat.
Multiplayer
Lobbies with a join code. See Playing with friends.
MyCareer and builds
MyCareer follows the player you created through full seasons, playoffs and off-seasons. You choose an archetype when you build them, and it sets how high each group of skills can ever go:
| Archetype | Best at | Weakest at |
|---|---|---|
| Slasher | Finishing and athleticism (99) | Rebounding (74) |
| Sharpshooter | Shooting (99) | Rebounding (72) |
| Floor General | Playmaking (99) | Rebounding (72) |
| Lockdown | Defense (99) | Playmaking (82) |
| Glass Cleaner | Rebounding (99), finishing (96) | Playmaking (74) |
| Two-Way Wing | Everything around 92 | No real weakness, no superpower |
You improve by playing. After every game you earn XP from your own box score: points, rebounds and assists, plus big rewards for steals and blocks, and a bonus for winning and for your game grade. Turnovers and missed shots cost XP, so a careless 30-point night can be worth less than an efficient 15. Playoff games pay one and a half times as much. XP buys upgrades, and each point costs more the higher the skill already is. Your overall rating rises as the skills that matter for your position rise.
Coins and the store
Coins come from real games, not the practice gym, and only for the player you control: 55 for a two, 95 for a three, 130 for a dunk, 110 for a block, 85 for a steal and 45 for an assist, with bonuses for perfect releases and tough shots, plus 750 for a win or 220 for a loss. A daily reward of 300 grows with each consecutive day for up to a week. The empty practice gym pays nothing. Everything in the store is cosmetic: ball skins and trail effects. Nothing you can buy makes your player better.
Playing with friends
- Open Multiplayer. The panel checks your network straight away and says whether direct connections work from it.
- One person presses Create lobby, then either reads out the 8-character code or presses Copy invite link and sends that.
- Everyone else opens the link, or types the code and presses Join lobby. The connection is made while the link's page loads, or as the last character is typed, so pressing Join is instant.
- Pick sides (up to five people per team, and the CPU fills empty spots), choose a mode, and the host presses Start game.
Games are peer-to-peer: players connect directly to the host. Some networks don't allow that. School Chromebooks often block the kind of traffic it needs, and two phones on mobile data often can't reach each other. When that happens the game tells you so within seconds, instead of leaving you on "connecting". If you're on a network like that, try joining from home Wi-Fi or a phone hotspot.
FAQ
Where is my save?
In your browser's own storage on your device. There is no account and nothing is uploaded. Clearing this site's data in your browser deletes your career and coins, and a different browser or device starts fresh. The privacy page lists exactly what is kept.
Does it work on a Chromebook?
Yes. Everything except multiplayer works on any recent Chromebook. For multiplayer, see above. A school-managed Chromebook may block it, and the game will say so.
The game runs slowly. What can I do?
Leave real-time shadows off in Settings (they're off by default), close other tabs, and make sure your browser has hardware acceleration turned on. The game targets 60 frames per second on a typical laptop, and most of the cost is the 3D arena.
Can I play with a controller?
Not yet. The game needs a keyboard, and there's no controller or touch support, so phones and tablets can't play it. Every key can be remapped on the Controls screen.