NBA Survivor Pool for 2026-27 — free for friends
Pick one NBA team to win each week. Win and you are through to next Monday; lose and you are out. You can never use the same team twice, and with 25 weeks to cover from only 30 teams, the hard part arrives sooner than you think. Free to run for your group on Sportpoolz, with no money involved.
Free forever — no credit card, no money changing hands.
How an NBA survivor pool works
Every Monday–Sunday week of the regular season, you choose one team to win one of its games that week, straight up. Your pick locks when that game tips off, so you can wait for injury news and pick Thursday's game on Thursday. If your team wins you survive the week; if it loses, you lose a life, and in a classic one-life pool that ends your run.
The catch is the calendar. The regular season is 25 weeks long and the league has 30 teams, so by April you will have spent all but five of them. The contenders go early, and the last weeks of the season come down to whoever saved a good team for them. You can lock in teams for future weeks in advance if you already know where you want to spend them.
What the manager sets
- Lives: one, two or three. One is classic and the default.
- Missed weeks: a week with no pick costs a life, unless the manager turns on auto-pick, which fills it with the best unused favorite among games that have not started.
- The starting week. A pool can begin with opening week or any week after, so a group that only gets going after Thanksgiving starts level.
- Ties: there are none in basketball — games go to overtime — so the tie setting never comes into play.
Key dates for the 2026-27 season
- First Monday–Sunday week: October 19–25, 2026
- Opening night: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
- Christmas Day, five games: Friday, December 25, 2026
- Regular season ends: Sunday, April 11, 2027
Survivor covers the regular season only. The play-in and the playoffs are not part of it, so the last week to survive is the one that ends on the final day of the regular season.
A sample month
- Week 1: you take a strong home team against a rebuilding side on Wednesday. It wins by twenty, and that team is gone for the season.
- Week 2: three of the twelve players in the pool lose on upsets; you choose a solid team on the second night of a home stand and move on.
- Week 3: you are travelling on Saturday, so you pick a Tuesday game early in the week and stop thinking about it.
- Week 4: half the pool has already used the top three teams. You saved one of them, and this is the week it pays off.
Common questions
Can I join an NBA survivor pool after the season starts?
Yes, if the pool starts at a later week. A manager can begin a survivor pool with any week of the regular season, so everyone in it starts on the same Monday with every team still available.
Do the playoffs count in an NBA survivor pool?
No. It runs on the regular season, so if more than one player is still alive after the last week, the pool's setting for co-champions or a tiebreaker decides it.
With 30 teams, is it hard to survive the whole season?
Very. Twenty-five weeks means only five teams go unused, and a heavy favorite on a back-to-back can still lose. Most pools are decided well before April.
Be ready the day it opens
Sportpoolz is free. Create your account now, and starting your pool takes a couple of minutes once it opens.