Runs

Put a run on

Pick a court, a start time and a format, and your run is live for the whole city to find. What you are asked for after that follows from the format, because a run is one of two things and GotNext does not pretend otherwise.

Teams play 3x3, the half-court classic, and 5v5 on the full court. Squads register a lineup, and you choose how it is played: a knockout bracket where losing sends you home, a round robin where everyone plays everyone, or a gauntlet where the winner stays on and the line keeps coming. You set how many teams it takes.

Hoopers play 1v1, settle it yourselves, and shootouts, no defence and all shot-making. There is no team to register and no bracket to seed, so you are never asked for one: you set how many players it takes, and hoopers join it themselves. The board shows how many spots are left and closes when it is full.

One run at a time. You cannot put a second one on until the one you are running is finished or cancelled, so nobody spreads a city thin across three half-full runs they cannot be at. A weekly regular is the exception, because that is a fixture, not a second run.

Keep it to your circle, or open it to the city

Not every run is for everybody. Mark a run private when you put it on and it disappears from the feed: nobody finds it by browsing, and nobody sees it who was not asked. You then get two ways in. Invite friends straight from the run and they get a notification to accept or decline, or share the run's code with anyone else and they type it in to join.

The code is the invitation, so there is no link to send with it: a private run has no page for anyone who is not on it. Blocking holds here too. Someone you have blocked cannot get onto your run, with a code or with a stale invite.

Register your team, name your lineup

On a team run, captains register their team with a named lineup for the format. On the day, the run page shows how many of each lineup are actually checked in at the court, so the organiser can see at a glance which teams have really arrived and which are still one short.

Full run? Join the waitlist

Every team run has a cap on teams. Register after it fills and your team goes on the waitlist. The queue is first come, first served by when you registered: when a team drops out, or the organiser raises the cap, the longest-waiting team is promoted automatically. No favours, no jumping the line.

A session is capped in players instead, and it simply closes when the last spot goes. There is no waitlist to join and nobody to drop out and let you in, so it says plainly that it is full rather than leaving you hanging on a queue that will not move.

No team? Raise your hand

You do not need a crew to play. On a team run, sign up as an open player and you go into the open player pool: the organiser pulls open players into registered teams with room in the lineup, so a team that turned up one short gets a body and you get a game. Free agency, the way it works at a real court.

On a session there is nothing to be slotted into, so there is no pool and no waiting on an organiser. You join it yourself and you are in.

Brackets that advance properly

A team run keeps a real bracket. As results come in, the organiser advances the run: knockout winners pair into the next round, the gauntlet chains winner-stays games until a champion stands, and a round robin closes on the standings. Advancing and completing a run are checked on the server, game by game, so a bracket can only move forward on real, recorded results.

Share it, and what else is on

Every run has a link. Send it in the group chat and it opens straight to the run, sign-ups and all. Alongside community runs, the runs feed carries an official section: curated tournaments and jams, clearly marked.