Laravel Eloquent - Combining queries to single one using relations - php

Question

I'm working on a project where I'm using Laravel Eloquent to fetch all my data from my database.
I'm storing basketball clubs, teams and players in different tables.
Now I want to select all basketball players that belong to a team that belongs to a club.
I created a relation in the Club model:
public function basketballPlayers()
{
return $this->hasManyThrough('App\Models\Basketball\BasketballPlayer','App\Models\Basketball\BasketballTeam','id','team_id');
}
And a user relation in the BasketballPlayer model:
public function user()
{
return $this->hasOne('App\User','id','user_id');
}
Now when I execute the following command, DB::getQueryLog() returns 3 Queries.
Club::findOrFail($club_id)->basketballPlayers()->with('user')->get();
But when I execute the following command without using relations, DB::getQueryLog() returns only 1 query.
$players = BasketballPlayer::Join('basketball_teams','basketball_teams.id','=','basketball_players.team_id')
->join('users','users.id','=','basketball_players.user_id')
->where('basketball_teams.club_id','=',$authUser->club_id)
->get(['basketball_players.*','users.firstname','users.lastname','basketball_teams.name']);
I don't need all the data from the club and the user (see ->get(...) in the Join query).
Is it possible to achieve the same result like in the "long" manual Join-query using the much cleaner and simpler Eloquent relation approach?
Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

You can read less data using with (not all user columns as example) by this
Club::findOrFail($club_id)
->basketballPlayers()
->with('user:id,firstname,lastname') // <- here is change
->get();
The id (and foreign keys) column is important. You should be also able to make nested with in following way (I write code from head - so please test it):
Club::findOrFail($club_id)
->with('BasketballPlayer:id,user_id')
->with('BasketballPlayer.user:id,firstname,lastname')
->get();