Philip Paek · Design
Players over teams
Clean UI, and every screen carries the personality of the player, the team, and the league.
Case study 03
Partner
NBA
Category
NBA • Basketball
Engagement
2022 to present
Scope
Product strategy • App design • React Native build • iOS/Android
Who built it
Four disciplines. One app.
Julia Putzeys · Product
Watch first
We started by learning how G League fans actually follow the league, then built for that.
Phil Flores · Frontend Engineer
Making the system work
Connecting all the dots and data points to showcase the talent.
The starting point · Where we came in
The G League had an app focused on team operations and player scouting. It didn't do the league justice, so the NBA asked us to rebuild it.
The audience was already there: scouts, families, hometown crowds, and NBA fans who wanted to see a name before the player got called up. The app they had reported scores/stats and not much else, and it ran on an aging platform.
We rebuilt it from the ground up for iOS and Android on one React Native codebase, and launched the new app for the 2023 season. Then we ran it, season after season.
The part everyone skips
The easy version is a smaller NBA app. Same screens, lower stakes.
A development league invites that shortcut. Shrink the big-league app, swap the logos, ship it. It would have worked, and it would have missed what the G League actually is.
The G League's whole story is the climb. The players on the floor are trying to earn the next level, and a lot of them make it. So we built the app around the players and fans, not the teams.
The idea we brought
Players over teams.
Every screen leads with the person. Player cards a fan could make their own and share anywhere, profiles that carry a player's story, and a design system that let each team's colors take over without breaking the app. The next one up stayed in view.
What we built
One app, from the design system to game night.
01 · Design System
A design system built around the player
One visual language across every screen, with each team's colors driving the theming from a single set of tokens. Ghosted team wordmarks, a grain wash, and stat tiles held it together. We ran it as a live component library so design and product could check every piece on its own.
02 · Player Cards
A design system built around the player
One visual language across every screen, with each team's colors driving the theming from a single set of tokens. Ghosted team wordmarks, a grain wash, and stat tiles held it together. We ran it as a live component library so design and product could check every piece on its own.
03 · Game Night
A design system built around the player
One visual language across every screen, with each team's colors driving the theming from a single set of tokens. Ghosted team wordmarks, a grain wash, and stat tiles held it together. We ran it as a live component library so design and product could check every piece on its own.
04 · The League
A design system built around the player
One visual language across every screen, with each team's colors driving the theming from a single set of tokens. Ghosted team wordmarks, a grain wash, and stat tiles held it together. We ran it as a live component library so design and product could check every piece on its own.
01/04
How we worked
Discovery, design, build, then run it live. Each season fed the next.
01 · Discover and design
Learn how fans follow, then build the system.
We started with how G League fans actually watch, and turned it into one design system built around the player instead of the team.
02 · Build once
One React Native codebase, both stores.
iOS and Android from the same code, with each team's colors driven by data so a new team never meant a new screen.
03 · Run it live
Game night was the deadline that kept coming.
We shipped builds, watched crashes, and supported the app through game nights, season after season since 2023.
The Result
Live for three seasons, and growing.
Seasons · since 2023
3
Live across three G League seasons
Platforms · One Codebase
2
iOS and Android, built in React Native
Acquisition · After the rebuild
⬆
App store product page views up sharply the first season on the new app
One team, not a vendor
Design, product and engineering in the same shop, on the same app, for years.
The design system and the React Native build were not a handoff between two companies. They were two disciplines in one shop, on the same screens, through discovery, launch, and every season after.
That is what let the app keep its point of view. Players over teams held up because the people who drew it and the people who built it were on the same team.
Contact
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