choucsan/NBA_Games

NBA Full-Game Video Dataset

This dataset provides metadata, official statistics, and official play-by-play annotations for full-length NBA game videos available on YouTube. Instead of redistributing video files, we provide YouTube video IDs and URLs so users can download videos independently when their use case and local policies allow it.

The dataset links long-form basketball videos with structured NBA.com game data. Each retained game has a verified YouTube video reference, a cleaned matchup and date, an official NBA box score, and, when available, official play-by-play event sequences.

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Pipeline

The dataset is built through a multi-stage cleaning and verification pipeline:

1. Playlist extraction: We started from the well-known YouTube NBA full-game playlist PLNbBj4TorBWerlzB1A5iM3XjwigqFG8sY, one of the most widely referenced NBA full-game collections on YouTube, containing hundreds of historic and classic games. From this playlist we extracted video IDs, URLs, titles, descriptions, durations, upload dates, and channels.
2. Valid-video filtering: The raw crawl contained 595 playlist entries, including many placeholder rows such as youtube video #... without usable metadata. We retained entries with real titles and durations, producing 217 valid full-game candidates.
3. Metadata normalization: We cleaned each title into a canonical matchup format, for example Golden State Warriors vs. Oklahoma City Thunder, and parsed dates from title/description text. Missing or ambiguous fields were completed with LLM-assisted inference and manual verification.
4. Official game localization: For each candidate, we queried NBA.com date pages such as https://www.nba.com/games?date=2016-02-27, then matched the cleaned matchup against the official game list for that date.
5. Historical-team handling: We normalized NBA.com historical abbreviations and franchise names, including PHL/PHI, SAN/SAS, NJN/BKN, NOH/NOP/CHA, SEA/OKC, and All-Star abbreviations such as EST/WST and LBN/GNS.
6. Official data crawling: For matched games, we downloaded structured data embedded in NBA.com game pages, including official box-score data and play-by-play actions when available.
7. Final filtering: We removed candidates whose date/matchup could not be confidently matched to NBA.com. The final release contains 189 verified games.

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Dataset Structure

NBA__Games/
├── nba_games.jsonl                        # One metadata record per retained YouTube game
├── games/
│   ├── 2016-02-27-gsw-vs-okc/
│   │   ├── video/                         # Empty placeholder; users may download video here
│   │   ├── box-score.jsonl                # Official NBA box-score rows
│   │   ├── play-by-play.jsonl             # Official NBA play-by-play rows, may be empty for older 
│   │   │ 
│   │   └── metadata.json                  # Source and official-game linkage metadata
│   ├── 2011-04-26-noh-vs-lal/
│   │   ├── video/
│   │   ├── box-score.jsonl
│   │   ├── play-by-play.jsonl
│   │   └── metadata.json
│   └── ...

Each game folder is named as:

YYYY-MM-DD-away-vs-home

For example:

2016-02-27-gsw-vs-okc

The folder name uses the official NBA.com home/away order after matching. The video/ directory is intentionally empty.

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Dataset Overview

• Total verified games: 189
• Total dataset duration: ~347 hours (1,249,758 seconds)
• Raw playlist entries: 595
• Valid full-game candidates before NBA.com verification: 217
• Metadata source: YouTube playlist metadata and video descriptions
• Official statistics source: NBA.com game pages
• Video distribution: Video files are not included; only YouTube IDs and URLs are provided
• Box-score format: JSONL, one row per team or player
• Play-by-play format: JSONL, one row per event/action
• Play-by-play availability: 166 games include non-empty play-by-play files; 23 older games have empty play-by-play files
• Total box-score rows: 5,194
• Total play-by-play rows: 81,355

nba_games.jsonl

Field	Type	Description
id	string	YouTube video ID
url	string	YouTube watch URL
title	string	Cleaned matchup in Team A vs. Team B format
date	string	Verified game date in YYYY-MM-DD format
duration	integer	YouTube video duration in seconds
description	string	YouTube description, or title fallback when description is unavailable

Example:

{
  "id": "I33o9UnUe1A",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33o9UnUe1A",
  "title": "Golden State Warriors vs. Oklahoma City Thunder",
  "date": "2016-02-27",
  "duration": 7357,
  "description": "Steph Curry knocks down 12 threes, including the deep game-winner..."
}

---

Box Score

Each box-score.jsonl file contains official NBA.com box-score information for one game. It uses JSON Lines so users can stream rows without loading a full file into memory.

Rows have two major types:

1. Team rows: row_type = "team"
2. Player rows: row_type = "player"

Team row fields

Field	Type	Description
source	string	Data source, usually nba.com
nba_game_url	string	Official NBA.com game URL
youtube_id	string	Linked YouTube video ID
youtube_url	string	Linked YouTube URL
game_date	string	Game date
row_type	string	team
game_id	string	Official NBA game ID
side	string	away or home
team_id	integer	NBA team ID
team_city	string	Team city/name prefix
team_name	string	Team nickname
team_tricode	string	Team abbreviation
team_slug	string	NBA.com team slug
score	integer	Final team score
periods	list	Period-by-period score objects
statistics	object	Team-level statistics

Player row fields

Player rows share the same game/team linkage fields and add:

Field	Type	Description
person_id	integer	NBA player ID
first_name	string	Player first name
family_name	string	Player family name
name_i	string	Initialed display name
player_slug	string	NBA.com player slug
position	string	Listed position when available
jersey_num	string	Jersey number when available
comment	string	DNP/injury/comment field when present
statistics	object	Player box-score statistics

The statistics object includes common box-score fields such as minutes, field goals, three-pointers, free throws, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, fouls, points, and plus-minus.

Example team row:

{
  "source": "nba.com",
  "nba_game_url": "https://www.nba.com/game/gsw-vs-okc-0021500874",
  "youtube_id": "I33o9UnUe1A",
  "game_date": "2016-02-27",
  "row_type": "team",
  "game_id": "0021500874",
  "side": "away",
  "team_tricode": "GSW",
  "score": 121,
  "periods": [
    {"period": 1, "periodType": "REGULAR", "score": 20},
    {"period": 5, "periodType": "OVERTIME", "score": 18}
  ],
  "statistics": {
    "fieldGoalsMade": 45,
    "threePointersMade": 14,
    "reboundsTotal": 32,
    "assists": 25,
    "points": 121
  }
}

---

Play-by-Play

Each play-by-play.jsonl file contains official NBA.com action-level event annotations for one game. Each line is one event/action ordered by game time.

Some older games do not have play-by-play available from NBA.com. For those games, the file exists but may be empty.

Common fields include:

Field	Type	Description
source	string	Data source, usually nba.com
game_id	string	Official NBA game ID
nba_game_url	string	Official NBA.com game URL
youtube_id	string	Linked YouTube video ID
youtube_url	string	Linked YouTube URL
game_date	string	Game date
actionNumber	integer	NBA.com action sequence number
actionId	integer	Action ID within the game feed
period	integer	Quarter/overtime period number
clock	string	ISO-8601-like game clock, e.g. PT11M50.00S
teamId	integer	Team ID associated with the action
teamTricode	string	Team abbreviation associated with the action
personId	integer	Player ID associated with the action
playerName	string	Player display name
playerNameI	string	Initialed player name
description	string	Human-readable play description
actionType	string	Event type, e.g. Foul, Jump Ball, Made Shot
subType	string	Event subtype
scoreHome	string	Home score after the action
scoreAway	string	Away score after the action
pointsTotal	integer	Total points after the action
shotDistance	integer	Shot distance when applicable
shotResult	string	Shot result when applicable
isFieldGoal	integer	Whether the action is a field-goal attempt
xLegacy, yLegacy	integer	NBA legacy shot-location coordinates when available
videoAvailable	integer	NBA.com video availability flag

Example row:

{
  "source": "nba.com",
  "game_id": "0021500874",
  "nba_game_url": "https://www.nba.com/game/gsw-vs-okc-0021500874",
  "youtube_id": "I33o9UnUe1A",
  "game_date": "2016-02-27",
  "actionNumber": 2,
  "clock": "PT11M50.00S",
  "period": 1,
  "teamTricode": "GSW",
  "personId": 201939,
  "playerName": "Curry",
  "description": "Curry P.FOUL (P1.T1) (S.Foster)",
  "actionType": "Foul",
  "subType": "Personal",
  "scoreHome": "0",
  "scoreAway": "0"
}

---

Quick Start

Install dependencies

pip install datasets huggingface_hub pandas yt-dlp

Load metadata from Hugging Face

from datasets import load_dataset

# Replace repo_id with the final Hugging Face dataset repo name.
repo_id = "choucsan/NBA_Games"

dataset = load_dataset(repo_id, data_files="nba_games.jsonl")
games = dataset["train"]

print(games[0])

Alternatively, download a single metadata file:

from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download
import json

repo_id = "choucsan/NBA_Games"

path = hf_hub_download(
    repo_id=repo_id,
    filename="nba_games.jsonl",
    repo_type="dataset",
)

with open(path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    games = [json.loads(line) for line in f]

print(f"Loaded {len(games)} games")

Read box-score and play-by-play files

from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download
import json

repo_id = "choucsan/NBA_Games"
game_dir = "games/2016-02-27-gsw-vs-okc"

box_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id, f"{game_dir}/box-score.jsonl", repo_type="dataset")
pbp_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id, f"{game_dir}/play-by-play.jsonl", repo_type="dataset")

with open(box_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    box_score = [json.loads(line) for line in f]

with open(pbp_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    play_by_play = [json.loads(line) for line in f]

print(len(box_score), len(play_by_play))

Download a YouTube video independently

Videos are not redistributed in this dataset. To download a video for local research use, use the id or url field with yt-dlp:

# Download one game by URL
yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" \
  -o "games/2016-02-27-gsw-vs-okc/video/%(id)s.%(ext)s" \
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33o9UnUe1A"

Or in Python:

import subprocess

game = games[0]
subprocess.run([
    "yt-dlp",
    "-f", "bv*+ba/b",
    "-o", f"video/{game['id']}.%(ext)s",
    game["url"],
], check=True)

Please ensure that downloading and using videos complies with YouTube's Terms of Service, copyright rules, and your local research policies.

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Applications

This dataset is designed for research on long-form sports video and structured event understanding.

Long Video Understanding

• Full-game temporal reasoning over 1.5-2.5 hour basketball videos
• Long-context video-language modeling
• Event localization from sparse textual queries
• Understanding momentum shifts, overtime, runs, and clutch sequences

Visual Retrieval

• Query-by-text retrieval of plays, players, teams, and game situations
• Shot or possession retrieval using play-by-play descriptions
• Cross-modal retrieval between video frames, play text, and box-score statistics

Temporal Prediction

• Score progression forecasting
• Next-action prediction from historical play sequences
• Win-probability and momentum modeling
• Player/team performance trajectory modeling

Action Understanding

• Basketball action recognition, such as made shots, missed shots, fouls, rebounds, turnovers, substitutions, and jump balls
• Fine-grained temporal segmentation of long sports broadcasts
• Player-centric event grounding using personId, playerName, and action descriptions

Multimodal Question Answering

• Video QA about what happened before/after a play
• Stat-grounded QA combining visual evidence with box-score rows
• Multi-hop questions linking play-by-play events to final outcomes
• Reasoning over player performance, team strategy, and game context

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Download

The dataset can be hosted on Hugging Face Datasets. Suggested layout:

choucsan/NBA_Games
├── nba_games.jsonl
├── games/
│   └── */box-score.jsonl
│   └── */play-by-play.jsonl
│   └── */metadata.json
└── images/
    └── nba.jpeg

Example download commands:

# Download metadata only
huggingface-cli download choucsan/NBA_Games \
  nba_games.jsonl \
  --repo-type dataset \
  --local-dir NBA_Full_Game_Metadata

# Download all structured annotations
huggingface-cli download choucsan/NBA_Games \
  --repo-type dataset \
  --local-dir NBA_Full_Game_Metadata

Video files are not included. Use the url field in nba_games.jsonl to download videos independently when permitted.

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Contact

For questions, corrections, or collaboration requests:

choucisan@gmail.com