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Historical East vs West Records Added to Basketball Reference

4th January 2024

Here at Basketball Reference we take our frivolities very seriously. So seriously that we have made a new addition to our Frivolities section: season-by-season breakdowns of how the Eastern and Western Conferences have fared against each other.

You can see, for instance, that the West has the upper hand thus far in 2023-24 after the East won the series for each of the last two seasons. Before those two seasons, the West won the series in 12 straight seasons and 21 of the previous 22. You can also see how dominant the East was from mid-50s through the 60s, and also for all of the 1980s.

One technical point to bear in mind with this data is that before the 1970-71 season, the NBA was split into Eastern and Western 'divisions' instead of 'conferences.'

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Statgeekery | Comments Off on Historical East vs West Records Added to Basketball Reference

Major Improvements to Men’s College Basketball Leaderboards

31st October 2023

Thanks to some recent data expansions, we have vastly improved the coverage of seasons on our men's college basketball leaderboards on the Sports Reference College Basketball site. This will make the most comprehensive online archive of college basketball statistics even more robust. One thing to note is that in some cases this allows for our leaderboards to be even more comprehensive than what is included in the NCAA Record Book. This is because many schools tracked statistics such as blocks, steals and assists long before they became 'official' NCAA categories. Below is a breakdown of some of these changes.

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features, History, Leaders | 1 Comment »

Expanded Data Added to Team Executives on Basketball Reference

31st October 2023

Basketball Reference has added new details to our Executives pages to provide greater context on the careers of the NBA's main decision makers.

While we have long had lists of transactions made by each of these execs on their pages, we have now mirrored the statistics that we show for NBA head coaches on these pages and added a sortable register.

So, for instance, you can now sort the details of all of these execs to see that Red Auerbach (who stayed on in the Celtics front office years after he retired from coaching) is the all-time leader in seasons (34), games (2,667), wins (1,738), playoff games (342), playoff wins (206), playoff losses (136) and championships (15).

Another sortable column on the table shows how many games each exec is over or under .500, which combines success with longevity. Five execs in NBA history are at least 150 games over .500: Auerbach, R.C. Buford, Jerry West, Pat Williams and Daryl Morey. It should also come as no surprise that one exec is more than twice as many games under .500 as any other in NBA history: Elgin Baylor.

Basketball Reference defines 'Executive' in this use case to be the executive in charge of player personnel decisions. For much of history, this was generally the front office employee with the 'General Manager' title, but this is often a 'President of Basketball Operations' or something similar now and was often the owner in the earliest days of the league. Sometimes this is hard to define and so we rely on beat reporters and league/team employees for their best judgments on who is making the calls in a given front office. If you have disagreements with any of the decisions made here, please let us know.

 

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features | Comments Off on Expanded Data Added to Team Executives on Basketball Reference

FBref: Leagues! 🇵🇹 Leagues! 🇧🇷 Leagues! 🇲🇽 Expanded Women’s and Men’s Data! New Data Partner!

25th October 2022

In our quest to show the most data possible, FBref has taken a major step forward this week. We have dramatically expanded our coverage of leagues and competitions with advanced stats.

In addition to our in-depth data for the Big Five Competitions (England, France, Germany, Italy & Spain), Champions League, Europa League, and MLS, we have added coverage of Women's Football for current seasons (and in some cases historical seasons) for:

  • 🇺🇸 American NWSL
  • 🏆 Women's Champions League
  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Super League
  • 🇦🇺 Australian A-League
  • 🇫🇷 French Division 1 Feminine
  • 🇩🇪 German Frauen-Bundesliga
  • 🇮🇹 Italian Serie A
  • 🇪🇸 Spanish Liga F
  • 🏆 Women's World Cup and Euros

But wait, there's more. On the Men's side we are adding more depth to our coverage including our first in-depth coverage of Latin American Football.

  • 🇳🇱 Dutch Eredivisie
  • 🇵🇹 Portuguese Primeira Liga
  • 🇧🇷 Brazilian Serie A
  • 🇲🇽 Mexican Liga MX
  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Championship
  • 🏆 Conmebol Copa Libertadores
  • 🏆 Men's World Cup, Euros and Copa America

Expanding access to data is a core value at Sports Reference, so we had to make changes to provide this level of coverage. We are pleased to announce that we are now a partner with Stats Perform Opta. Opta's data has replaced the previous data from StatsBomb on our site in all cases. This new partnership is the largest data deal we've ever signed and represents a huge commitment by FBref to advance access to Women's football data throughout the world. We are grateful for the long-term commitment that Stats Perform has made to us. And if you all flock to the site in the way we expect, this is just the start of the data we may present over the life of our partnership with Stats Perform.

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, expire120d, FBref, Features, Stathead, Uncategorized | Comments Off on FBref: Leagues! 🇵🇹 Leagues! 🇧🇷 Leagues! 🇲🇽 Expanded Women’s and Men’s Data! New Data Partner!

A Plethora of Historical NFL Awards Data Added to PFR

4th March 2022

Thanks to the research of John Turney, we have made a big addition in our coverage of historical awards given to the NFL's top players. With this addition, more context can be given to which players were considered the best in various categories. Here follows a list of the latest additions we have made:

Again, a big thanks to John Turney for collecting and providing this data. Turney's name may be familiar as we have also credited him in our addition of AP award voting breakdown data as well as pre-1982 sacks. If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to contact us directly via our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Data, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 2 Comments »

Football Stathead Adds New Search Filter Options

25th February 2022

As we did with Hockey Stathead a couple weeks ago, our team has rolled out some improvements to the Player Season Finder on Football Stathead. Whereas before, there were three search types, we've now doubled the number of options available to six!

The original options are still there on the top, allowing you to search for single season stats, multiple season or career stats, and players who achieved the search criteria in multiple seasons. However, there's also three new options

Find most players in a season matching criteria

This option shows the number of players in a given season who match the criteria you're searching. So, for example, say you're looking up players who threw for 4,000 passing yards in a season. With this criteria, you could see which season had the most players posting 4,000 or more yards.

Find most players on a team in a season matching criteria

This option will allow you to search for teams that had multiple players accomplish the same statistical feat in a single season. For example, this will let you see the seven teams that had multiple 1,000 yard rushers in the same season. Or you could utilize our historic sack data to see all the teams since 1960 with multiple 10-sack players in a season.

Find most players for a team in combined seasons or careers matching criteria

The final new option gives you the ability to look up which franchises had the most players achieve your given statistical thresholds. Unlike the other two new searches, which involve single seasons, this searches a span of years, whether you want that to encompass the entirety of NFL history or just a decade or era. For example, the Packers had the most 50-TD scorers of any NFL franchise with 15, while the Ravens have had the most Pro Bowlers since 2010, with 32.

If you're not a Stathead Football subscriber, you can have access these new improvements and all the other amazing tools for a month totally free by signing up for a free trial! Or check out our All Sports package to see the great tools available for Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey as well.

Posted in Announcement, Features, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Stathead | 1 Comment »

Provisional 2021 Approximate Value Now on PFR

13th January 2022

With the season concluded, we're pleased to report that we've added 2021 Approximate Value (AV) numbers to the site for all NFL players. Note that these numbers are just provisional right now; the final numbers will be released after the All-Pro teams are announced.

Update: All-Pro teams have since been announced so 2021 Approximate Value has since been finalized.

Josh Allen leads 2021 players with 19 AV, and Justin Herbert, Patrick Mahomes, Cooper Kupp and Micah Parsons close behind at 18. You can see all of the top players in this Stathead.com Player Season Finder search.

Not sure what AV is? To learn more about PFR's attempt to put a single number on each player-season since 1960 (for the purposes of comparing players across position and era), check out this link. Feel free to send us feedback via our site's form.

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, General, Leaders, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Stathead | Comments Off on Provisional 2021 Approximate Value Now on PFR

Stathead Adds Player Filters to More Tools and Focuses on Filter Standardization

24th November 2021

Today we released two fairly substantial updates for Stathead. These updates are early steps in our internal “Stathead Unification” project. While Stathead is the most powerful research tool in sports, we knew that spending some time on the organization and consistency of these amazing features would make it even better. This is the first of many updates related to this effort.

Filter by Player

For a long time, many of our Finders have allowed you to filter by player. For example, if you’d like to search for all multi-home run games in Barry Bonds’ career (sorted by date) or games in which Wilt Chamberlain did NOT score 20 points (sorted by minutes), you can.

Previously, you could only get to those filtered views from the player’s page on their respective Reference site.

Screenshot of Finder links on Reference site

Now you can filter by player right from Stathead.

Screenshot of new Stathead interface with Player Selector

This functionality is new for the following Finders:

  • Baseball
    • Player Game Finder
    • Player Split Finder
    • Player Streak Finder
    • Player Span Finder
  • Basketball
    • Player Game Finder
    • Player Streak Finder
    • Player Span Finder
    • Player Quarter Finder
    • Event Finder
    • Lineup Finder
    • Plus-Minus Finder
    • WNBA Player Game Finder
  • Football
    • Player Streak Finder
    • Touchdown Finder
    • Player Split Finder
    • Field Goal Finder
  • Hockey
    • Player Game Finder
    • Player Streak Finder
    • Player Advanced Stats Finder

Filter Movement

These filters all can be found in new locations. We reorganized these filters to be much more consistent from tool to tool but also from sport to sport. Now when you’re looking for the “Opponent” filter in any Finder, you’ll always go to “Game Filters”. Previously, it was sometimes a top-level filter. Sometimes it was a Team Filter. Sometimes it was a Player Filter. Now it’s always a Game Filter. There are many more examples below, itemized so you’ll know exactly where to find the filter you’re looking for.

This new organization also sets us up well for the next phase of this project—adding even more filters so our tools have more similar features across all sports.

Player Season Finder

  • Baseball
    • No. Franchises Played For: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Height: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Weight (lbs.): Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Year of Debut: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Final year: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Year of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Month of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Day of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • Year of Death: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Basketball
    • Team: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
    • League: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
    • Position: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
    • Birth Country: Combined with “Birth State” into a new “Place of Birth” filter
    • Birth State: Combined with “Birth Country” into a new “Place of Birth” filter
    • Year (of Player’s Career): Moved from “Status Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • College: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
    • All Star Selection: Combined with “All Star Selections” (“Number of Years Selected” option appears when running a multiple season search)
    • All Star Selections: Combined with “All Star Selection” (“Number of Years Selected” option appears when running a multiple season search)
  • Football
    • Position: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
    • Draft Filters: Moved to “Biographical Filters”
    • Pro-Bowl: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Status Filters”
    • All-Pro: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Status Filters”

Player Game Finder

  • Baseball
    • Opponent: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
    • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
    • Game Result: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Basketball
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
  • Football
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
    • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Status Filters: Moved to “Player Filters”
    • QB Credited With: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Hockey
    • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"
    • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”

Team Game Filter

  • Baseball
    • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
    • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Basketball
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • Game Number: Renamed “Span of Games” and moved from “Game Filters” to top-level
  • Football
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • All Opponent-based Filters: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters” (for example, Opponent, Opponent Conference, Opp was a playoff team, Opp played in Super Bowl, etc.
  • Hockey
    • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
    • Playoffs: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"

Player Split Finder

  • Football
    • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”

Player Streak Finder

  • Baseball
    • Streak Start or End: Moved from “Player Filters” to top level.
    • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
    • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Basketball
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
    • Had Double-Double: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
    • Had Triple-Double: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
    • Role: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Football
    • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Hockey
    • Position: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
    • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"

Team Streak Finder

  • Baseball
    • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
    • Opponent’s League: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
    • Streak Won-Loss Events: Moved from “Streak Stat Events” to top-level.
  • Basketball
    • Game Type: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level
    • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
    • Team: Moved from “Situation Filters” to “Team Filters”
    • League: Moved from “Situation Filters” to “Team Filters”
  • Football
    • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
    • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
    • Overtime Game: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
    • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
  • Hockey
    • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"
    • Situational Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
    • Opponent: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”

Player Span Finder

  • Baseball
    • Active: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Hall of Fame: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
  • Basketball
    • Year (of Player’s Career): Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • College: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Active: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Hall of Fame: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
    • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”

Team Span Finder

  • Baseball
    • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”

Basketball Team Score Finder

  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: Shot Finder

  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: Lineup Finder

  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: NBA Draft Finder

  • Biographical Filters: Renamed “Player Filters”

Football: Play Finder

  • Playoff Round: Now only appears when “Playoffs” is selected from “Game Type”
  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Drive Finder

  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Field Goal Finder

  • Kicking Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Draft Finder

  • Round: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
  • Pick: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
  • Draft Type: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
  • Draft League: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
  • Draft Team: Moved from “Pick Filters” to “Player Filters”

Football: NFL Combine Results

  • Statistical Filters: Renamed “Result Filters”

Hockey: Goal Finder

  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
  • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”

Hockey: Player Advanced Stats Finder

  • Year (of player’s career): Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”

Hockey: NHL Draft Finder

  • Status Filters: Moved to “Player Filters”

In addition to moving filters, the order of filters is now much more consistent across different Finders and sports. For example, Status Filters will always be in the order “Rookie, Active, All Star (or All-Pro, Pro-Bowl, etc.), Hall of Fame” when those filters are available. Similarly, “Seasons” will always come before “Game Type”. There were many minor inconsistencies here that we rectified (too many to list).

Posted in Announcement, Features, General, Redesign, Stathead | 1 Comment »

Basketball Reference Adds Pages For All Draftees in NBA History

9th November 2021

While Basketball Reference has been creating unique player pages for everyone selected in the NBA draft for the past couple of years, many people who never played in the NBA but were selected in the draft could only find their names in our draft tables. We have decided to rectify this by creating player pages for every draftee in NBA history, dating back to the inaugural 1947 BAA Draft. Due to historical drafts being much longer than the current two-round format, this has led to almost 4000 new player pages. These player pages include biographical information, links to relevant college/international pages and family connections where available.

Some notable people that are getting pages as a result of this addition:

- Len Bias, 2nd overall pick in the 1986 draft who tragically passed away days later
- Lusia Harris, 137th overall pick in the 1977 draft and the first woman ever selected
- Terry Stotts, 38th overall pick in the 1980 draft who went on to coach the Portland Trail Blazers
- Carl Lewis, 208th overall pick in the 1984 draft who had set Olympic track and field records
- Phil Elderkin, 205th overall pick in the 1973 draft who was a reporter selected as a joke by the Cavaliers' Bill Fitch
- Dave Winfield, 79th overall pick in the 1973 draft who went on to have a Hall of Fame career in Major League Baseball.
- Jay Bilas, 108th overall pick in the 1986 draft who went on to be a successful college basketball broadcaster

We give big thanks to data developer Charlotte Eisenberg for her time organizing and collecting data for this project.

Please let us know via our feedback form if you have any questions or comments.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Draft, Features, History, Trivia | Comments Off on Basketball Reference Adds Pages For All Draftees in NBA History

WNBA Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder added to Basketball Stathead

2nd August 2021

At the beginning of the WNBA's 25th season, we detailed a huge expansion of the advanced stats and features available in our WNBA coverage on Basketball Reference. This week we are proud to announce two new additions to our suite of Basketball Stathead search tools available for the WNBA, the Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder.

The Player Game Finder allows you to search through our entire database of regular season and playoff game logs for every player in every game in WNBA history. You can search by statistical criteria (i.e. points, rebounds, etc.), player characteristics (age, team, etc.) and game filters (location, result, etc).

Here's a few examples to get you started:

Most games with at least 10 assists in a season
All regular season and playoff triple-doubles in WNBA history
Most career 25-point games

The Player Comparison Finder allows you to compare the regular season and playoff statistics of up to six WNBA players for a single season or combined seasons. You can view statistical totals, per game, per 100 possessions and per 36 minutes; you can also view advanced stats (PER, Win Shares, etc.) for each of the players.

For example, here’s a comparison of Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi in their first WNBA season.

We hope you enjoy this addition to our WNBA coverage and Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the product, you can sign up for a free trial here!

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo, Stathead, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on WNBA Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder added to Basketball Stathead