Names come and go in sports. Especially in American Sport! Due to franchise relocations and sponsorship changes, you need to get use to new names pretty regularly. So when the NBA G League popped into existence in 2017, many ball fans were left wondering what does G League stand for?

The G in G League stands for Gatorade, which is the current sponsor of the league. The name is a combination of the league’s previous name, the D League, and the Initial of Gatorade, making G League.

Gatorade is the sponsor of the G-League.

In 2017 a deal was struck with the D-League for well-known sports drink Gatorade to own the naming rights sponsorship. So the official name is the Gatorade League, but obviously, the G-League sounds a lot cooler and is an interesting callback to its unsponsored name, the D-League. Although it begs the question of why Gatorade is happily shortening their name to G-League so people don’t immediately know they are the sponsor!

Previous Name – NBA Development League – D League

From the years 2005 until 2017, the league was known as the NBA Development League, a place for players not quite at the level of the NBA to develop into superstars or see out the rest of their career. The nickname for the Development league became the D-League, as it obviously sounds a lot cooler.

G-League does not stand for Gangster.

Although it would be amazing, and this joke was made plenty of times when the league was first announced, I’m sad to inform you that the G-League is not the Gangster league. The merchandise would probably be a lot better, and you might get more college kids going straight to the G-League if this was the case, so maybe we should start a petition to get its name officially changed to the Gangster League.