balldontlie

Name: balldontlie API
Brand: balldontlie
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentData EnrichmentData Transformationnone7 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Look up NBA teams, players, games, and per-game stats from a free unauthenticated read-only API.

Quickstart

Get started with balldontlie in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"find nba games on a specific date"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with balldontlie API.

Look up NBA games by date or season with paginated responses

Search NBA players by name and retrieve full player records

List all NBA teams or retrieve a single team's details

Pull per-player per-game stats for any season since 1979

Retrieve a specific game's metadata by its numeric ID

GET STARTED

Start building with balldontlie API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use for: Find all NBA games played on a given date, Retrieve season stats for a specific NBA player, Search for an NBA player by last name, Get the roster information for a specific NBA team

Not supported: Does not cover non-NBA sports, betting odds, or live play-by-play feeds — use for NBA team, player, game, and stat lookups only.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for balldontlie, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

balldontlie is a free read-only NBA data API covering teams, players, games, and per-game player statistics. The seven documented endpoints return JSON for every NBA game since 1979, every roster, and every box-score line. The API has no authentication and no usage tier, which makes it a popular choice for sports-themed prototypes, classroom data-science exercises, and lightweight dashboards.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use balldontlie API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Sports Dashboard or Mini-App

Build a lightweight NBA scoreboard, fantasy helper, or fan dashboard using free data. /api/v1/games supports date and season filters, /api/v1/stats returns per-player per-game lines, and /api/v1/teams returns the league directory. Because the API is unauthenticated, the dashboard can ship as a static site that fetches client-side.

Fetch GET /api/v1/games?dates[]=2026-04-15 and render the day's scores in a dashboard.

Data Science and Modelling

Use balldontlie to pull historical box scores into a notebook for player projection modelling, fantasy lineup optimisation, or classroom statistics exercises. /api/v1/stats accepts season and per-player filters and paginates through the full historical record. Because there is no auth, scripts can run on shared machines without secret management.

Page through GET /api/v1/stats?seasons[]=2024&player_ids[]=237 and write the rows to a CSV for downstream modelling.

AI Agent Integration via Jentic

An agent built on Jentic can answer NBA-related natural language questions by selecting the right balldontlie endpoint based on intent. Because the API is unauthenticated, no vault setup is required, and the agent can call the operation directly through Jentic's catalogue.

Search Jentic for 'find an nba player by name', load the schema for GET /api/v1/players, and execute it with search=Curry.

Key Endpoints

7 endpoints — balldontlie is a free read-only nba data api covering teams, players, games, and per-game player statistics.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/api/v1/games

List NBA games with date and season filters

GET

/api/v1/players

Search NBA players

GET

/api/v1/teams

List all NBA teams

GET

/api/v1/stats

Per-game player box-score stats

GET

/api/v1/games

List NBA games with date and season filters

GET

/api/v1/players

Search NBA players

GET

/api/v1/teams

List all NBA teams

GET

/api/v1/stats

Per-game player box-score stats

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

No credentials are required. balldontlie is unauthenticated, so Jentic forwards calls without vault interaction. The MAXsystem still mediates the operation contract so the agent gets a clean schema-driven input.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like 'find NBA games on a date' and Jentic returns the matching balldontlie operation with its parameter schema, so the agent skips reading docs.

Time to first call

Direct integration: under an hour — every endpoint is GET with no auth. Through Jentic: similar speed, with the operation registered alongside other tools so the agent can plan multi-API workflows.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Bandsintown

Concert and event data API; useful when building event-themed apps alongside sports data

Use Bandsintown when the app blends sports data with concert and event listings; both APIs are similarly read-oriented.

Complementary

Bacon Ipsum

Placeholder text generator for filling in commentary fields in sports prototypes

Use during prototyping a sports app to generate description fields without writing fake content.

Complementary

Backendless API

BaaS that can persist user picks, favourites, and notifications for a sports app

Use Backendless to store user state for an NBA dashboard while balldontlie supplies the underlying data.

FAQs

Specific to using balldontlie API through Jentic.

What authentication does the balldontlie API use?

None. The OpenAPI spec declares no security schemes and the public endpoints accept unauthenticated requests. Through Jentic, the operation appears in the catalogue and can be called without any vault setup.

Can I get historical NBA stats through the balldontlie API?

Yes. GET /api/v1/stats accepts seasons[] and player_ids[] filters and paginates through every regular-season game line since 1979. Pair it with GET /api/v1/games to attach game metadata.

What are the rate limits for the balldontlie API?

balldontlie is a free public service. The OpenAPI spec does not declare explicit limits but the maintainers ask developers to be reasonable; cache responses where possible and batch requests with the seasons[] and player_ids[] arrays rather than calling per-row.

How do I find a player by name through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'find an nba player by name', load the schema for GET /api/v1/players, then execute with the search query parameter set to the player's last name. No credentials are required.

Is the balldontlie API free?

Yes. balldontlie is free to use with no API key required and no published paid tier. It is community-maintained, so SLAs are best-effort.