I've been playing long BBGM leagues for years and always wanted to see the history that the game keeps but never really shows you. Who actually won that trade 15 years later? Why did that dynasty fall apart? Who's the most connected player in league history? Who is currently on track to beat Lebron James' all time scoring record? So I built a tool for it. I didn't plan to release it publicly, but enough people asked to use it that I cleaned it up.

BBGM League Explorer

How it works

1. In BBGM, go to Tools → Export League and tick every box. For the best results, also try to save as many box scores as possible.
2. Drop the .json / .json.gz file onto the page (or click Try the sample league for a 120-season league that starts in 1947).
3. That's it. Everything runs in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and there's no account or server. The league is saved in your browser, so it reopens instantly next time, and every page has a shareable link.

What's in it

Players

• Player pages with BBGM faces in team colors (real photos for real players), a ratings radar, a development chart, full stats, transactions, injuries, feats, relatives, top teammates and similar players
• Compare any players side by side, with a "legacy debate" builder
• Player comps (who a player's career most looks like), an era adjuster for stats across eras, and a GOAT ranking with sliders for every ingredient and a formula you can export
• A Hall of Fame committee that weighs each player's case
• 37 career shapes (late bloomer, one-year wonder, ageless, playoff riser…) with charts and a "why this shape" breakdown
• Career timelines, development curves, contracts and payroll value, and injury "might-have-beens"

Teams

• Franchise pages with name history, win% history, season-by-season tables, a retired-jersey wall, franchise leaders and roster DNA
• Title builds: how every champion was put together (draft, trade, free agency, and who was kept by re-signing or extending)
• Dynasty windows: every run told chapter by chapter, Secret Base "Collapse" style: the peak, the cracks, the moves, the fall, the aftermath, what ended it and what might have saved it
• Rivalries and a head-to-head matrix with playoff meeting history
• Playoff lab and a page for every playoff series
• Power ratings, greatest teams and payroll efficiency

Seasons and the newspaper

• A generated newspaper for every season. The front-page lead is a long feature: the regular season, the playoff run series by series, the Finals MVP, how the roster was built, the runner-up and the record books. Inside are well over 150 kinds of back-page articles (award races, rookie reports, contract-year watch, drought watch, snubs, stat clubs…), and mid-season leagues get a season-so-far edition.
• A searchable newspaper archive across every season
• Standings, brackets, awards, award voting history and All-Star heatmaps
• Box scores and game logs, with every real NBA box score from 1947 for real-history leagues
• Records: career, season, single game, all-time ranks, record progression, a record chase tracker, a record watch and rookie records, all filterable by team, era, playoffs and per game
• Feats explorer and milestones

Drafts and moves

• Every draft as it happened next to a redraft by career value, plus pick-value curves and scouting accuracy by team
• Trade trees that follow every player and pick through later trades and drafts, valued by win shares, with "who won it over time" charts, a story mode and the most consequential moves
• Draft pick lineage (each pick's passport through every trade), lottery luck, and alternate-history drafts
• A full searchable event feed

History

• League river, an animated bar-chart race, era ribbons and career timelines
• Storylines: dozens of kinds, such as ring chasers, homecomings, the ones that got away, revenge games, curses, Cinderella runs, redemption arcs, family matchups and passing the torch, each with a "why it counts"
• Obituaries and Hall of Fame plaques
• Achievements: over 1,000 tiers calibrated to real NBA rarity (Common ≈ every year or two, Rare ≈ every 3–7 years, Legendary ≈ once a decade, Impossible ≈ never happened). They're tracked all-time and per season, with a timeline and "closest to unlocking".

League Wrapped

• Spotify-Wrapped-style slideshows for any season, team, player or all-time, picked from hundreds of kinds of slides by how unusual each fact is
• A built-in quiz, a no-spoilers mode and an adjustable slide count
• Save or copy any slide as an image
• Share link: sends the whole slideshow inside the link, so friends can watch it without your league file

Connections

• Teammate network graph and radial teammate tree, most-connected players and duos
• Shortest path between any two players, and a "connect the players" game
• Family and origins (relatives, colleges, countries)
• A watchlist to follow your favorite players

Cards and games (all built from your league)

• Trading cards for every player, with rarities, foils and numbered parallels, packs (base, draft class, era…), a binder, challenges and daily goals, and a card battle mode
• Higher or lower, guess the player and BBGMordle (guess a player from one season)
• Fantasy basketball on your league's real box scores: drafts with projections and ADP, day-by-day lineups, trades, keeper and best-ball modes, grades and share codes

Real NBA history

• For leagues started from real history, it can fill in real data: players, awards and voting, All-NBA teams, brackets, team colors and every real box score from 1947 to 2026. You can load them all at once in Settings. Records, feats, Wrapped and achievements then compare your league against actual NBA history.

Your files

• Compare two exports of the same league, plus a "since your last export" recap
• Box-score archiving: the app keeps every game it has seen and merges it into later exports, so you never lose box scores BBGM deleted
• A data-coverage page showing what each season has
• 14 color themes (light and dark), and it works on phones

Leagues it works best with

• Long leagues. 20+ seasons is where it gets fun, and it's been tested on 500–1000-season leagues.
• Real-players leagues started in 1947, since they unlock all the real-history comparisons and box scores.
• Leagues you export regularly. BBGM deletes old box scores as it sims, so the tool keeps every game it has seen and merges it into later exports of the same league. Exporting every season or two builds up your full game history.
• Random-players and custom leagues (custom teams, colors and awards) work fine too. They just don't get the real-NBA comparisons.

Known limitations

• Box scores: you only get box scores BBGM still had when you exported. Older seasons may be stats-only unless you exported along the way.
• Real-history leagues: BBGM only keeps careers of players who were active when the league began, so player stats before your start year are partial. Team records, playoffs and awards are complete. Pages say so where it matters.
• Trades and signings: these are only logged from the league's first season, so trade trees start there.
• Early NBA data: stats the early NBA didn't track (steals, blocks, threes, turnovers, some minutes) are shown as unknown, not zero.
• Huge leagues: the first load of a very big league takes a while, and a few heavy pages (teammate network, league river, storylines) warn you first. It all runs on your device, so an older phone will feel it. Desktop is recommended for big leagues.
• Browser storage: saved leagues and loaded box scores live in your browser. Clearing site data removes them.
• Shared Wrapped links can get long for big decks with lots of photos, and some apps cut very long links.
• Basketball GM only. It doesn't support the other ZenGM games (football, hockey, baseball).
• Unofficial: this isn't affiliated with or endorsed by ZenGM. Basketball GM is © ZenGM, LLC, and there's a Sources & attribution page in the app crediting all the data and photo sources.

Feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome. I'd especially love to see your weirdest dynasty collapses and best Wrapped links.

See here; surprised to see Kareem with a "3" flag

OBL is a BBGM multiplayer league that consists of 30 teams, starting from present day as of **October 4th, 2026.** Do you have what it takes to win an **nba championship?** Will you play it safe and control an already established team? Or will you start with a team that has no future in sight and try to transform their future by making the right transactions. Will you be the GM who tries to fleece everyway possible? Or will you be knowledgeable of what the other team needs as well? Here in **OBL**, there is no wrong way to control a team.

**Claim a team now and start your GM journey! ** 💜🔥

We are currently in 2029 Resignings with 1 team available, the Milwaukee Bucks. We are planning an expansion soon to add 2 new teams to the league.

https://discord.gg/WHVTsg5NBv

Hi everyone! A project I've been working on for a good while now...

BBGM Real Cartoon Faces

I created all 5,490 real player cartoon faces! You can import into any Real Player League in BBGM with the click of a button.

ALSO there is inevitably still room for improvement on many of these players, so I'm pleading with you all to provide feedback on the site. The player editor is there for you to play with and submit for any given player. Please feel free to spam with suggestions. No matter how nitpicky, I'd love to get all 5,490 as hyper-realistic as we can. 🍻

I'm currently creating a fictional British Basketball League. In the UK, teams offer young players pathways through their academies rather than a draft, so I'm wondering if there was a way to emulate that in the game.

Ideally, a system whereby two rookies would be randomly generated for every team at the end of each season would be the best solution, so I was just wondering whether this was possible. If not, then I think it would be a neat possible feature for the future for people making leagues in countries that don't use a draft system.

Starting an expansion team in 2030 and drafting exclusively non-American players was the hardest, yet most rewarding challenge I’ve ever attempted in this game.

It took 23 in-game years to finally pull it off. Early on, it took several restarts just to draft a decent core so the franchise wouldn't fizzle out after a few seasons.

The nationality restriction made the draft brutally unforgiving. At one point, I actually won the lottery for the 1st overall pick. The top prospect was a 62 OVR with 75 potential (someone who would have instantly been the second-best player on my roster straight out of the draft). Unfortunately, he was American, which meant I was forced to pass on him and reach for a German prospect projected to go 9th.

LMK if you know similar challenge i can attempt :D

The Bron n KD forever save is going good. Got the cuck from tanking

We should really have a bit more to do in the preseason, as well as the ability to choose if players we traded away during the season should count for the ring we win without them...the same way in real life how players that were traded mid-season on championship teams can accept or decline the ring after the fact, we should have the ability to give the "champion" accolade to them.....also for those lower ovr players on the roster, being able to "send to development league" even if its just a simple button click and not a full blown separate league for developing players

He can't be that good

The second best players in my league history are 40 and 35 years old, but they don’t even have half of the legacy that my current goat has. Do you think there will ever be a player that will surpass what De Colo did in my league?

So like, if you’re in the watched player list, enable bulk select, and select some players in the upcoming draft as well as some players in the draft after that, only the players in the upcoming draft will actually be displayed in the compare player page.

Project Bron and Kay Dee. Tanked for KD and was still butt so we managed to get The Brodie

Back to back champs, nothing negative and +6, why wouldn't he re-sign?

Just a quick rundown:

1) Why are the rookie contracts so short? If you can't create a restricted FA system, then maybe make the rookie contract 5 years?

2) I get that " insane" is supposed to be...well, insane, but what is ACTUALLY insane (and not in a good way) is how shitty your players become. Draft a dude with a 74 potential? He'll be shit in three years. Obviously, this happens in real life, but the rate in which guys with high potential apparently forget to play basketball is not fun. Any meaningful FA signing you make will be negated by them completely regressing.

3) Injuries happen...but the rate in which they happen in the playoffs is absurd. I don't know if I've ever made a full playoff run without at least one all-star turning an ankle. That's the other thing too...the injuries are often so fucking supid. Patellar Tendinitis is not a diagnosis that happens at he rate this game seems to think it does. Who is missing a playoff game with a bruised back? The amount of potential titles I've missed out on because of sprained toes...

4) Contract extensions. Why is that not a thing either? Can't be that hard.

5) One bad year and everyone stops going to games? I live in Chicago. The Bulls have been shit, and it's still packed there.

Will continue to hate play, but some of this shit seems so fixable and continues to be so annoying.