Man, so I got this idea that I wanted to build something for NBA games. Not sure why, just felt like messing around with stats and plays. Started simple – thought I’d grab some data from NBA websites.
First thing I did was fire up Chrome and try copying scores manually. What a pain! Spent like two hours just for one game’s stats. Realized quick that doing this every day would suck big time. Needed automation bad.
The Screw-up Phase
Found some free stats websites, tried using Python with requests library. Wrote this scraper script that looked something like:
response = *(“that one nba stats site”)
Bam! Got blocked immediately. Like instantly. Those sites have crazy bot protection. Changed my IP address three times – same result. Felt like hitting a brick wall.
The Pivot
Okay, scratch web scraping. Heard about this NBA API thing. Signed up for developer access, got approved after two days. Felt pumped! Finally thought I had it.
Tried fetching basic stuff first:
- Teams roster – worked!
- Player stats – got blocked
- Play-by-play data – error city
Turns out free tier API is useless junk. Rate limits tighter than my wallet. Couldn’t get any meaningful data out.
The “Good Enough” Solution
Gave up on automation after three days of headache. Now I just:
- Watch condensed game highlights on YouTube
- Take screenshots of important plays
- Dump stats into spreadsheets manually
Takes about 20 minutes per game. Not fancy but actually works. Moral of the story? Sometimes low-tech beats high-tech. Spent a whole weekend learning that the hard way!
