NBA G League

• 1. Introduction

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  The NBA G League is the developmental league of the National Basketball Association. By the middle of 2014, a third of all NBA players had once suited up in it. Four years earlier, in 2011, that share had stood at only 23 percent. In that gap lies the story of how a group of scattered minor league franchises became something NBA teams could not do without. The league comprises 31 teams, and as of the 2024-25 season, all but one belong to a single NBA club. The exception is the independent Mexico City Capitanes. This documentary follows how that connection was built and how a player earns a route onto an NBA roster. It also traces how a sponsor's name ended up attached to the whole league.

• 2. Before The NBA Noticed

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  For more than twenty years before it built its own league, the NBA relied on the Continental Basketball Association to develop players. In March 2000, the NBA tried to buy the CBA outright, but the offer was turned down. Three months later, on the 13th of June 2000, commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Russ Granik announced a replacement, the National Basketball Development League. Play began in November 2001, with a rule that every player had to be at least twenty years old.

  The first season fielded only eight franchises, all clustered in the Southeastern United States, in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. Each team ran its own colors under a shared NBDL logo. Reebok signed on as a sponsor. ESPN2 and Fox Sports South carried select games, including the NBDL Finals, giving the minor league a rare level of national coverage. The Greenville Groove won that first championship on the 8th of April 2002, beating the North Charleston Lowgators in game two. Eight players were called up to the NBA that season, among them Chris Andersen, the first player an NBDL team ever drafted. Average attendance came in at 1,640 fans a game, below what the NBA had projected.

  That shortfall in the stands, and the league's small footprint, would push it toward a new name within a few years.

• 3. A Name Bought Twice

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  In 2005, the league changed its name to the NBA Development League, shortened to NBA D-League. The change came as part of a new collective bargaining agreement with the NBA. It was also a deliberate move to draw more fans by making the NBA connection obvious.

  Before the 2017-18 season, Gatorade paid to attach its name to the league. It was first called the NBA Gatorade League, then officially shortened to NBA G League. That deal made it the first United States professional sports league named for an advertiser. In December 2017, the NBA and the streaming platform Twitch agreed to broadcast G League games. Games also began airing on the ESPN+ subscription service.

  By then, most G League teams already answered to a single NBA franchise, a structure built team by team since 2006.

• 4. Built One Team At A Time

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  In 2006, the Los Angeles Lakers became the first NBA club to own a G League team outright, buying the Los Angeles D-Fenders. The San Antonio Spurs followed in 2007, buying the Austin Toros, now the Austin Spurs. A year later, the Oklahoma City Thunder bought the Tulsa 66ers, later renamed the Oklahoma City Blue.

  In 2009, the Houston Rockets and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers pioneered a different arrangement, called the hybrid model. Under it, the G League club stayed independently owned while the NBA team ran its basketball operations. Similar hybrid deals followed. The New Jersey Nets partnered with the Springfield Armor starting in 2011-12. The Knicks paired with the Erie BayHawks in 2011, and the Trail Blazers with the Idaho Stampede in 2012.

  By 2015, the Indiana Pacers had purchased the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the league's last team still shared by multiple NBA clubs. That made 2015-16 the first season in which every team answered to just one NBA franchise. That same year, the Toronto Raptors placed a new expansion team, the Raptors 905, in Mississauga, Ontario, marking the league's move outside the United States.

  In 2016, the league added three more NBA-owned teams, its largest expansion since 2007. They were the Charlotte Hornets' Greensboro Swarm, the Brooklyn Nets' Long Island Nets, and the Chicago Bulls' Windy City Bulls. That ownership map determined exactly where a player like Yi Jianlian would land when the Dallas Mavericks assigned him to the Texas Legends.

• 5. From Bench To The NBA

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  Each NBA team can send two first-year or second-year players under a standard contract down to its G League affiliate. If a third player gets assigned, the team must trim its G League roster to keep the total at twelve. The assigned player still draws his NBA salary and stays on his NBA team's roster, listed as inactive.

  Starting in the 2011-12 season, the league allowed veteran players to be sent down as well, but only with their consent. Players with three years of NBA experience or less can be assigned and recalled as many times as a team wants, with no cap.

  The NBA's 2017 collective bargaining agreement, effective from the 2017-18 season, let each team sign two players to two-way contracts. Those players spend most of the year on the G League roster. But they can join their NBA team for up to 45 days during the regular season. They can also be part of the roster during NBA training camp and after the G League season ends, though not for playoff games. Only players with four or fewer years of NBA experience qualify, and only their own NBA team can call them up. The league's newest agreement, in effect since the 2023-24 season, raised the two-way limit to three players per team.

  Since the 2014-15 season, an NBA team can decline to sign one of its draft picks. That player can then sign directly with the team's own G League affiliate. Before that rule, an unsigned pick could end up playing for another organization's G League team instead. Teams can also designate up to four players waived during training camp as affiliate players, tying them to that NBA club's G League team. Those players remain free agents that any NBA team is still free to sign.

  By the 2017-18 season, players outside the two-way system were earning a small fraction of what their two-way teammates made.

• 6. Wages And The Draft

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  The minimum age to play in the G League is 18. The NBA requires players to be 19 and one year removed from high school. A G League contract pays a base salary of $35,000 a season, plus housing and insurance benefits. Getting called up to the NBA adds a bonus worth as much as $50,000.

  The G League draft runs eight rounds in a serpentine order, so the team that picks first in round one selects last in round two. It supplies most of what fills out a team's roster each season. A third round was added to the format in 2014. Every year, the league also holds a Player Invitational, where prospects compete for a spot in the coming draft.

  Since 2006, NBA draft eligibility has required a player to turn 19 by the end of the calendar year. That rule pushed prospects into one season of college basketball before turning pro, a pattern known as one-and-done. Beginning with the 2019-20 season, the G League offered an alternative: select contracts for players not yet eligible for the NBA draft. These contracts paid up to $125,000 a season, giving players who did not want to or could not attend college another path. The league launched its prospects team built around this idea, the G League Ignite, in 2020. The Ignite team folded after the 2023-24 season.

  In the 2017-18 season, G League players outside the two-way system earned either $19,500 or $26,000 for the year. Two-way players earned far more, an annual rate between $50,000 and $75,000, prorated for the days spent with their G League team. While with their NBA club, they collected a prorated share of the NBA's minimum rookie salary, which stood at $815,615 that same season. The COVID-19 pandemic briefly complicated the arrangement. Two-way players in 2020-21 were first capped at 50 NBA games, then cleared to play more and to appear in the playoffs.

  That promise of a road back to the NBA was already being tested by players selected in the league's own draft.

• 7. Alumni Who Made It

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  Aaron Brooks, Rudy Gobert, Bobby Simmons, and Pascal Siakam are the only former G League players to win a major NBA end-of-season award. Simmons won the Most Improved Player award with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2004-05. Brooks earned it with the Houston Rockets in 2009-10, and Siakam won it with the Toronto Raptors in the 2018-19 season. Khris Middleton became the first former D-League player named an NBA All-Star when he made the 2019 All-Star Game.

  In the 2008 NBA draft, the Portland Trail Blazers picked the Idaho Stampede's Mike Taylor 55th overall, the first NBA D-League player ever drafted. He was later traded and signed a rookie contract with the Los Angeles Clippers. In the 2014 draft, two D-League players were picked for the first time. P. J. Hairston went 26th, the first D-League player ever taken in the first round, and Thanasis Antetokounmpo went 51st.

  Rudy Gobert made the NBA All-Star team in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and Khris Middleton followed in 2019, 2020, and 2022. Pascal Siakam was selected in 2020, 2023, and 2025, and Fred VanVleet made it in 2022. Other players who passed through the G League later won NBA titles. They include Shaun Livingston and Matt Barnes in 2017, Jeremy Lin in 2019, and Gary Payton II in 2022. Hassan Whiteside, Chris Boucher, J. J. Barea, Danny Green, and Quinn Cook also built NBA careers after time in the league.

  Several of those same careers first drew notice at the league's own All-Star Game, an event it ran annually for about a decade before retiring the format.

• 8. Showcases And All-Star Nights

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  The league held its first All-Star Game on the 17th of February 2007, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. It ran as part of NBA All-Star Weekend, with fans voting for each team's starting lineup. The East team won 114-100, and Pops Mensah-Bonsu was named the game's MVP.

  A year later, the game moved to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, where the Blue team beat the Red team 117-99. Jeremy Richardson took MVP honors, and the league debuted its Dream Factory Friday Night events, modeled on the NBA's All-Star Saturday Night. Adam Harrington won the Three-Point Shootout, Brent Petway took the Slam Dunk Contest, and Lance Allred won the game of H-O-R-S-E.

  The 2009 game moved to the Phoenix Convention Center, where the Red Team beat the Blue Team 113-103. Blake Ahearn and Courtney Sims shared MVP honors. In 2010, at the Dallas Convention Center, the Western Conference beat the Eastern Conference 98-81. Bakersfield Jam center Brian Butch scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to win the game's MVP award. That year the league also debuted its Shooting Stars Competition.

  The game ran every year through 2017 at NBA All-Star Weekend sites. In 2018, it was replaced by a matchup between G League all-stars and the Mexico national team in Los Angeles. The format never returned. Since 2022, select G League players instead join NBA rookies and sophomores in the Rising Stars Challenge.

  The NBA G League Showcase began in 2005 as a scouting event for NBA general managers, with every team playing every other team. It grew into a four-day event with two games per team, and between 2005 and 2017 the Showcase produced 15 call-ups or recalls. Since 2019, it has been held at the Mandalay Bay Resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Space limits mean the games are played without spectators, though they are still broadcast on TV and online. The 2019 Showcase ran as a series of mini-tournaments, with the winning team splitting a $100,000 grand prize.

  In 2025, the Salt Lake City Stars beat the Raptors 905, 137-112, in Orlando to win the league's Cup tournament. It is the newest event on a calendar the G League keeps adding to.