NBA G League
American men's basketball minor league
The NBA G League, or simply the G League, is a professional basketball league in North America that serves as the developmental league of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The league comprises 31 teams; as of the 2024–25 season, all are single-affiliated or owned by an NBA team except for the independent Mexico City Capitanes.
The league was founded in 2001 as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL), renamed the NBA Development League (NBA D-League) in 2005. It received its present name in 2017 under a deal with Gatorade, becoming the first U.S. professional sports league named for an advertiser.
Initially eight teams, the league expanded after 2005 under a plan by NBA commissioner David Stern, Russ Granik, Bobby Sharma, and other league executives, to develop it into a true minor-league farm system, with each team affiliated with one or more NBA teams. By mid-2014, one-third of NBA players had spent time in the league, up from 23% in 2011.
History
National Basketball Development League (2001–2005)
On June 13, 2000, NBA commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Russ Granik announced the formation of the National Basketball Development League, to begin play in November 2001, with players required to be at least twenty years old. This was not the first time the league had their own minor league system, as they had used the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) as a developmental league for over two decades. The NBA had attempted to buy the CBA in March 2000, but they were rejected.
The league began its play as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) in the 2001–02 season; the eight franchises were all located in the Southeastern United States (in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia).
“NBA G League” enters the record as american men's basketball minor league. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what League, American and men's can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q842793. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2001, 2005 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “NBA G League” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.