‹ Back to SagaSAGAYour life in sports
Saga is a diary for the games you watch, and a place to follow the stories behind them. Log a game the way you'd log a film: how much you saw, who you watched with, where you were, and what you'll remember. Every game also gets its own story, its momentum graph and a Saga score that measures how good it was to watch.
How to use it
Log a gameTap the gold + on any game. Pick the parts you watched (any half of any quarter, or the highlights), rate it in half stars, add who you were with and where, and write what you want to remember. If you noticed something the box score missed, add it as a moment.
Your diary and reviewsEvery game you log goes in your diary, by date. Tap one to open its review page, where friends can comment.
The DailyYour front page: the night's storylines, the top performers, your teams, today's games and the best games of the week.
Games and genresEvery night's scores, with a graph of how the lead moved. Genres (Comebacks, Seesaws, Down to the wire and more) sort games by what kind of story they tell.
Storylines and sagasStorylines are the stories behind each game, written from the game's data. Sagas are the season-long narratives (a championship run, the ripple effect of a trade), event by event.
Fan momentsThings fans saw that never show up in a box score. Add one from a game page or when you log a game; when another fan backs it up, it can become part of the game's story.
How Saga scores work
A Saga score is a number from 0 to 10 for how good a game was to watch. It's measured from the play-by-play, not voted on, so it can tell you a game is worth your time before you know who won.
Drama (65%)How the lead moved: lead changes, how close it stayed late, overtime and comebacks. A game that was close in the final minutes scores high; a game decided in the first half scores low.
Highlights (35%)The plays people replay. Every play gets its own score from 0 to 10 for how much it swung each team's chance of winning, so a go-ahead shot in the last minute counts far more than a basket in the first quarter.
StakesA small bonus when a lot was riding on it: the playoffs, the Finals and NBA Cup games.
8+Instant classic
6–8Thriller
3.5–6Watchable
0–3.5Blowout
When a game's play-by-play hasn't come in yet, its graph is shaped from the score at each quarter break and its Saga score is marked as an estimate until the real one arrives.
Team Saga scoreHow well each team played in that game. Winning counts a little; the margin, how much of the game a team led, a comeback, holding on to a lead, shooting (field-goal percentage against the other team's) and turnovers count more. Both teams in a close game get credit for it, so a two-point loss isn't scored like a blowout.
Player Saga scoreEach player's game on the same 0 to 10 scale, in three parts. Production (60%): the box score, with points, shooting, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks counting for you and misses, turnovers and fouls against you. Story (40%): how much your baskets, assists, blocks and steals moved your team's chance of winning, so a long three late in a tied game counts for far more than the same shot in a blowout. Expectations: a little more or less for playing above or below your usual. The player who moved the game most in the last five minutes is its Closer.
Fan ratingsThe average of what Saga's fans rated a game, in half stars. It shows once at least three people have rated it, next to how spread out the ratings are.
Where the data comes from
NBA and NFL scores, play-by-play, lineups and player stats come from balldontlie. Player and team backgrounds draw on Wikipedia and Wikidata, credited where they're used. Write-ups and storylines are written by AI from that data, and from moments fans report. Ratings, reviews and diaries are the people using Saga.
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