balldontlie
★ 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.
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.
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Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | 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'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 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.
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.
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