Community OpenAPI document · agent-readyData EnrichmentData Transformationnone7 EndpointsREST
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For Agents
Look up NBA teams, players, games, and per-game stats from a free unauthenticated read-only API.
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.
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.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the balldontlie to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the balldontlie, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fballdontlie.io%2Fballdontlie" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fballdontlie.io%2Fballdontlie" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
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
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 API Directory.
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
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
B
balldontlie
- AI-Aware (A-)71/100
100
Foundational Compliance69
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility43
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability100
Security100
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
100
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A+Signals: 4
99%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
69
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: B+Signals: 4
50%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
43
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: D-Signals: 4
22%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
100%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
50%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
100
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
100
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring balldontlie by hand means hand-coding GET calls against the games, players, teams, and stats endpoints and their date, season, and player-id array filters. Through Jentic you install once, import the balldontlie API from the API Directory, and your agent calls it with no credential to store at all.
Permission scoping
balldontlie is unauthenticated and read-only across its seven GET endpoints, so scoping is by operation: limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as GET /api/v1/games and GET /api/v1/players. There is nothing destructive to withhold, since every operation only reads NBA data.
Credential isolation
balldontlie is unauthenticated, so there is no credential to store and your Jentic One instance forwards the call without any secret. Nothing sensitive enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'find NBA games on a specific date' or 'look up a player by name', and Jentic returns the matching balldontlie operation with its parameter schema so the agent skips reading the docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
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.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the balldontlie API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which balldontlie operations the agent may call, so you can allow only the endpoints it needs, such as GET /api/v1/games and GET /api/v1/players, and withhold the rest. Every balldontlie operation is a read-only GET across its seven endpoints, so scoping is purely about which lookups the agent can reach, not about destructive actions. The API is unauthenticated, so there is no credential to grant or withhold, and the agent simply cannot invoke any operation you have not permitted.
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