If you are a friend of Sports Reference, you'll know that sponsorships, which launched in July of 2002, were our second revenue generator (the first being just asking for money). For those who want to know, Charles Saeger sponsored Scott Erickson on July 21, 2002 to kick things off. For a number of years, sponsorships were our main revenue generator and paid all of the bills. Since 2006, however, sponsorships have become less and less of our overall revenue, now representing less than 4% of our annual revenue.
Read the rest of this entry

Head spinning from all of the reports as NBA Free Agency kicks off? Bookmark our 2016 NBA Free Agent Tracker which will update constantly with the latest reports.

The 2016 NBA Draft will take place Thursday night, June 23. Here's some draft info you should check out before, during & after the draft:

• 2016 NBA Draft Preview: See the top picks of all-time from every slot, as well as Expected Value of each pick.
• Full history of the NBA Draft, with every pick: See every NBA Draft, as well as breakdowns by franchise.
• Play Index Draft Finder: Make customized searches through every pick in NBA Draft history.
• Play Index Player Season Finder: Filter your searches by draft classes.

With a 3-point shot, a stunning block, and perhaps the most iconic non-dunk of all-time, the 2016 NBA Finals and the 2015-16 NBA season are officially in the books. But there's hardly enough time to hold Cleveland's first championship parade in half a century and order a commemorative DVD before the basketball world moves on to the next thing: The 2016 NBA Draft.

Last week, we looked at the challenge facing the team that owns this year's #1 overall pick, the Philadelphia 76ers. However, we also saw the potential reward that awaits them, as the Cleveland Cavaliers just won a title with two players they drafted #1 overall: LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Read the rest of this entry

See SportsLogos.net for historical and current sports logos

Chris Creamer does amazing work at SportsLogos.net and I've been wanting to work with him for quite a while to put examples of past and current logos on our sites.  So when our 2016 redesign got underway, we worked out an agreement that we could use copies of his aggregated logos on our site.

We also realize that many historical logos show offensive representations of various ethnic groups and peoples that were commonplace in their time and in American society. These representations are wrong now and were wrong then. We present them, as we do all of our facts, to educate and illuminate, and these prejudices have been an unfortunate part of the history of the sports we all enjoy and love.

Obviously, we do not own these logos and cannot give you permission to use them. We use them under a fair use argument. We use small resolution images, which do not impact the economic viability of the logos for their owners. And we provide them for educational purposes only. It's up to you to know the relevant intellectual property law and, since I'm not a lawyer, this is clearly not legal advice.

Enough with the disclaimers. Check out some old-time teams for some old-time logo goodness.

Update: on March 23, 2017, we decided to remove logos prior to the seasons for which we have logos. For example if no logo was shown for 1892 Beaneaters we displayed their 1900 logo. This is mostly an issue for MLB, but could also arise elsewhere.

It's tough to remember, since we're in the middle of the wild, entertaining, and cheap shot filled 2016 NBA Finals, but in just around a week, it'll be time for the 2016 NBA Draft. That's right, we only have to wait until next Thursday to find out if Brandon Ingram or Ben Simmons will be the newest member of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Simply obtaining the number one pick is a huge moment for the 76ers. It'll be the third time in franchise history that the team has selected first overall and the first major decision of the team's new regime, led by GM Bryan Colangelo.

Unfortunately, a dark truth lingers in the background of the NBA Draft, the Lottery, and the debate over the process that brought Philly here: It's very, very easy to screw up the #1 pick. There are the famous busts, of course, but more than that, there's just not that many times that the team with the number one pick in the NBA Draft can look back at what happened and say to themselves "Yup, we'd do that again if we had the chance." Read the rest of this entry

We have decided to remove the team and player Elo Rating pages. We had high hopes for the raters when we launched them but over the years they have too often become a test tube for online campaigns to elevate Dallas Cowboys or push down Los Angeles Lakers to a degree that we don't have any faith that they represent actual general user opinions on the relative quality of players or teams.

These pages will be removed as we launch our redesigned sites this summer beginning with hockey in a week or two.

Game 2 of the 2016 NBA Finals will be a big occasion. Of course, they'll all be big occasions, since they will determine who the NBA Champion is. But Game 2 will be especially momentous, because -- barring injury, suspension, or an abrupt announcement from Adam Silver that this year's Finals will last one game -- it will be the 35th of LeBron James' Finals' career, matching Michael Jordan's total.

As a human being on the Internet, you are no doubt aware of the fact that LeBron and MJ experienced different degrees of success in their time in the NBA Finals. MJ went 24-11 in his 35 games, winning all 6 titles that he played for. LeBron, on the other hand, is 13-20 in Finals games and 2-4 in series.

Their records speak for themselves, but that's also a pretty surface-level way of looking at it. LeBron was swept in 2007, but that team's second best player, by Win Shares, was Zydrunas Ilgauskas, a far cry from the Jordan's Hall-of-Fame sidekick Scottie Pippen. Should he get extra credit for that? Or what about last season, when the LeBron's Cleveland Cavaliers won two games against the Golden State Warriors with Timofey Mozgov as their second best player due to injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving?

In other words, despite the record, can one build a case that LeBron actually has been more accomplished, on an individual level, than MJ in the Finals? Let's dig a little deeper into the numbers. Read the rest of this entry

As you may have noticed, Cleveland's Channing Frye has been on fire in the 2016 NBA Playoffs. Go ahead and check out his postseason shot-chart and date here.

He's a ridiculous 26-45 on 3-pointers, thus far. His Effective FG% is a sizzling 81.8%. That puts him on pace to break Birdman's record for eFG% in a single postseason. (Apparently, it's nice to be a back-up big playing with LeBron James).

Obviously, Frye is taking far different types of shots than Chris Andersen was, though. With our play-by-play statistics, which are available back to 2000-01, we are able to see shooting performance on specific shot types, as well. And thus far, Frye is shooting jump shots more effectively than we've seen in any of the last 16 postseasons. Here's the best eFG%s on jumpers in single playoffs since 2001 (minimum 50 jump shots attempted).

We hope everyone had a pleasant Memorial Day weekend. We just wanted to quickly mention something before it gets lost in the shuffle with the NBA Finals starting in two days. In the Cavaliers' Game 6 win over Toronto, LeBron James passed Michael Jordan to become the all-time leader in career postseason Win Shares. LeBron has, however, played more career postseason games and minutes than Jordan, so His Airness remains the all-time postseason leader in Win Shares Per 48 minutes.

Earlier this season, James passed Jordan to become the NBA's All-Time VORP leader (calculated since 1973-74).

Here's how the advanced statistics stack up for James and Jordan in their postseason careers (through the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals):