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.

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.

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 | sh

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 instance

Jentic 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

GET STARTED

Start building with balldontlie API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

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

Why Jentic?

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

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.

Time to first call

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.