Okay so today I woke up thinking, man I really wanna know how my favorite Brazil basketball teams are doing right now. Like, who’s winning? Who’s dropping down? That kinda thing. But every dang sports website makes it so complicated to get live standings, y’know?
The Frustrating Start
First thing I did was head over to the official league website. Big mistake. Felt like walking into a maze. Pop-ups, weird navigation, stuff loading slow… ugh. Tried a few big international sports sites next. Annoying! Either the data was hours old, hidden behind some “premium” paywall, or buried under ten layers of menus showing everything BUT the simple standings table I actually wanted. I swear I clicked more ads than standings links. Got so annoyed I almost closed my laptop right there.
The “Oh Duh” Moment
Was about to give up when I remembered something stupidly simple: local news. Searched for “NBB ao vivo” (that’s live in Portuguese). Bingo! Found a couple regional Brazilian sports sites. They weren’t fancy, but guess what? Smack in the middle of their homepage was a clean little box showing the current positions. Teams, wins, losses, percentages – everything basic, updated right then. Felt kinda dumb for not trying that first.
Making It Mine (The Messy Way)
Alright, found the live data… but I wanted it at my fingertips anytime, not by hunting down some website. Here comes the fun part. Opened up my trusty spreadsheet program.
- Step One: Painstakingly copied every single team name, win count, loss count, and points percentage straight off the site into the spreadsheet. Slow and boring, man.
- Step Two: Started trying to make it live. No idea what the proper way is. Maybe check some developer thingy? Nah, way above my head tonight. Started messing around with that “import” feature in the spreadsheet program. Tried copying the website address directly into it… sometimes it works! Got lucky after a few tries with one specific site.
- Step Three: The spreadsheet complained about formatting. Rows were everywhere. Spent maybe an hour just dragging data around, deleting extra stuff, trying to make the numbers stay numbers and not turn into gibberish text. Coffee was essential fuel here.
The Almost Success
Finally got a semi-decent looking table in my spreadsheet! It wasn’t pretty, but it showed the teams in order by points percentage, just like the standings should. Even slapped some ugly color coding on the top teams and bottom teams. Felt a tiny bit proud. Told myself “Dude, this kinda works!” But deep down I knew it was held together by digital tape. One website layout change and the whole thing would probably explode.
Why Do I Do This Again?
So yeah, mission accomplished… mostly. Got my live standings, sorta kinda automatically updating in a spreadsheet that looks like a child drew it. Was it efficient? Not really. Was it smart? Probably not. But it scratches my itch to see that live ranking shift, you know? Next time maybe I’ll try figuring out a less manual way. Or maybe not. Sometimes the messy, hands-on struggle is part of the fun. Or maybe I’m just stubborn. Who knows. Anyway, time to go see who lost tonight!
