The NBA G League, or simply the G League, is the National Basketball Association's (NBA) official minor league basketball organization. The G League was known as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) from 2001 to 2005, and the NBA Development League (NBA D-League) from 2005 until 2017. The league started with eight teams during the 2001–02 season; it now comprises 27 teams across the United States and Canada. The league began its play as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) in the 2001–02 season. It was created in large part as a response to changes in the NBA labor agreement in 1999, which prohibited teams from assigning players with two or fewer years of experience to the minor leagues. The NBDL, as originally conceived, would serve as a "farm system" for the NBA; however, several provisions in the labor agreement prevented this from ever coming to fruition.
In essence, the agreement stipulated that players could be assigned to the NBDL three times during their first four years in the league; however, they could not be recalled from the NBDL during their rookie season, nor could they be assigned to the NBDL after having played more than two seasons in the NBA. In October 2001, the NBA formed a partnership with AOL's FanHouse to provide complete coverage of the league's development league. With this agreement in place, the NBDL began operation with eight teams for the 2002–03 season. The first two seasons of the NBDL were focused primarily on player development; however, in 2005, after the NBA labor agreement changed to allow players to be assigned to the NBDL an unlimited number of times, the league began to expand its focus to include more competitive play. In 2005, the NBDL added additional teams, increasing the number of franchises to eleven. This triggered a major realignment of the league's structure; before the 2006–07 season, all of the NBDL's teams were located in the southeastern United States.
The league realigned itself so that it could expand further into the Midwest and West; as a result, three of the league's teams moved to different cities. The Austin Toros relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, becoming the Albuquerque Thunderbirds; the Huntsville Flight moved to Austin, Texas, becoming the Austin Toros; and the Mobile Revelers moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, becoming the Tulsa 66ers. In the 2017–18 season, the D-League entered into a multi-year partnership with Gatorade and announced it would be rebranded as the NBA Gatorade League (G-League) effective in the 2018–19 season. The G League's regular season runs from November to April. Each team plays 50 games regardless of conference affiliation. At the end of the regular season, the playoffs consist of four rounds; each series is a best-of-three format. The top eight teams in each conference (regardless of divisional alignment) qualify for the playoffs. The G League is the first professional basketball league in the United States to use a progressive fouling rule. Starting with the 2018–19 season, players commit six fouls rather than five before fouling out of a game.
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