At Basketball Reference, we're constantly working to beef up the accuracy and content of our historical box scores. A coverage map of our progress can be seen here.

We recently undertook a mission to ensure that the sum of player points within our box scores correctly adds up to their team's points in that game. We uncovered an interesting wrinkle in the way the NBA (and the ABA) attributed points to players and teams decades ago.

Read the rest of this entry

At Basketball-Reference, we have a box score for every game in NBA history. However, the depth of those box scores is variable. In the 1940s and 1950s, they're generally barebones (points and FG/FT made) and for the last 35 seasons or so they're complete. A little over three years we announced that we had added ~99% coverage for NBA box scores for the 1984-85 & 1983-84 seasons. At the time, we were missing some ancillary statistics in 28 games over those two seasons. We're happy to announce that we've whittled that down to seven five games and each of those seven five is in 1983-84, meaning 1984-85 is now 100% covered.

Read the rest of this entry

In Basketball-Reference's League Index, we include a link to NBA league averages broken down by season, so you can take a look at the evolution of the sport from the leaguewide perspective. Previously we only included the per-game averages, but we have now added options to view the yearly breakdowns in the form of totals and in per 100 team possessions format.

Maybe taking a look at the league totals over the course of the years makes some things more apparent, such as looking at 2004-05's 38,748 3-point attempts, as opposed to 2017-18's 71,340 3-point attempts. Going by totals also makes the shortened 1998-99 and 2011-12 seasons a little more apparent in the historical register.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

The NFL Scouting Combine is ramping up, and we find ourselves 2 months away from this year's NFL Draft. You can begin familiarizing yourself with the process and history of the draft on Pro-Football-Reference.

Our 2019 Draft Preview shows you the current draft order, as well as the historical best picks in each slot and the average player value that pick has produced.

We have a 2019 Draft Prospects page that lists the draft-eligible players broken down by positions, as well as links to their college statistics if you want to dive a little deeper into their past performance.

As Combine results come in, you can compare how past Combine participants have fared in 40-yard dashes and vertical jumps, among other drills, with our NFL Combine Results Play Index tool, which can search all available measures back to the 2000 Combine. 2019 results will be searchable after the Combine is completed.

Other sections of our Play Index that you can explore include our Draft Finder, which lets you search for draft results with custom criteria such as position, round, team and more, and our Trade Finder, which lets you search for player or draft pick trades since 1994.

Our Draft Pick Trade Value Chart uses the classic Jimmy Johnson system to assign value points to each pick of the 2019 draft, a great aid if you want to project potential pick trades as we approach Draft Day.

Get yourself acquainted with NFL Draft history at Pro-Football-Reference, all the way back to the first one in 1936, and using the previously mentioned features you can get yourself prepared for the 2019 edition of one of the NFL's biggest offseason events.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

The Basketball Reference database contains box scores for every game in NBA/BAA/ABA history. However, the completeness of these box scores is variable. The boxes are more or less complete back to 1983-84, but only player points, field goals and free throws are complete all the way back to the start of the BAA in 1946-47. However, we are constantly fleshing out older box scores to make the data on the site more complete (with big assists from Todd Spehr, Sean Burrill and Matt Shuh). Since this is constantly changing, we have added a data coverage summary so that users know how complete our data is when running a search. As you can see, the page has four different tabs: Games, Playoff Games, Regular Seasons and Playoffs.

Read the rest of this entry

In college basketball the talent spread across teams has always been very disparate. This makes recruiting arguably the most important aspect of college basketball (ahead of even coaching). For the more modern era of the game, we have compiled Recruiting Services Consensus Index Rankings back to 1998. That is a compilation of the top 100 recruits in any given class.

But aside from noting McDonald's All-Americans, we had little to no info on the top recruits from older seasons. So we're happy to announce that we've now compiled information on High School Basketball All-Americans all the way back to 1949!

Read the rest of this entry

With Chris Clemons and Mike Daum on the verge of becoming the 9th and 10th 3,000-Point scorers in major men's college basketball history, we have added a master list of every 2,000-Point scorer in major men's college basketball history to the Frivolities section of our college basketball site.

The list currently features 579 names, including 11 players active in 2018-19: Clemons, Daum, Jon Elmore, Tyler Hall, Fletcher Magee, Garrison Mathews, Matt Morgan, Nick Mayo, Tookie Brown, Jordan Davis and Justin Wright-Foreman.

Read the rest of this entry

Through the games of February 5, 2019 there have been 533 50-point games in NBA history (497 in the regular season and 36 in the playoffs). We have a box score with FGM, FTM and Points scored for every player for every game in NBA history. What we don't always have (particularly for older seasons) is FGA and FTA. However, we have made a concerted effort to get these details for every 50-point game in league history and we now have the full shooting details for all of these performances with the exception of three one.

Read the rest of this entry

Last month, we announced that you could now search for spans of starts by QBs, back to 1950 in the Player Game Finder. We want to point out that you can also use this feature as a simple toggle to restrict your search to starters or subs. This can be done for all other positions only back to 1999, but for quarterbacks it works back to 1950 using the "QB Started" filter.

Here's a few examples of searches you can run with this capability:

• • • The most touchdown passes thrown in a game by a substitute is five (done three times)
    • The most pass attempts in a season in games in which a player came off the bench is 205 by Bobby Thomason of the 1951 Packers.
    • Babe Parilli threw for 4,666 yards in his career as a reserve. That's the most career passing yards off the bench by anyone since 1950.
    • Among players with 100+ career pass attempts as reserves, the top three passer ratings all belong to Super Bowl winning Hall of Famers.
    • Y.A. Tittle authored eight Game-Winning Drives as a reserve, which is the most since 1950.

So your team is down 7 runs in the 7th inning, and you're tempted to accept defeat when you realize that you're watching baseball and one hot inning could change the end result. Wouldn't it also be nice to have some facts on your side about other teams that have accomplished improbable comebacks?

Well, Baseball-Reference is here to help with a new page that tracks the biggest comebacks in baseball sorted by the lowest win expectancy a winning team faced before mounting their comeback. Win Expectancy is a measure based on play-by-play, so this measure is available in full back to 1974 and mostly complete back to 1925.

In the regular season, we have 2 situations where a team was at 0.01% win expectancy before eventually winning. On June 29, 1952, the visiting Chicago Cubs were down 8-2 to the Cincinnati Reds with 2 outs and nobody on base in the top of the 9th inning. One more out would've ended the game, but the Cubs managed to get a string of 7 runs and ended up escaping with the victory.

The 2nd situation happened with the 1990 Phillies, who were down 11-1 to the Dodgers in the 7th inning. From there, Von Hayes drove in 2 runs in the 8th inning, and that led to a full-force comeback in the 9th inning, including a 3-run homer by John Kruk. Philadelphia went on to leave Dodger Stadium that night with a 12-11 win.

We also have a table for most improbable postseason comebacks. At the top of the list is the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics, who came back from an 8-0 deficit in the 7th inning to win Game 4 of the World Series, a series they would go on to win. More recently, you may recall the Red Sox coming back from a 7-0 deficit to take Game 5 of the 2008 ALCS from the Rays. Even if Tampa Bay went on to the World Series, Boston fans could take minor solace in J.D. Drew driving in Kevin Youkilis for the game-winning run in Game 5.

Check out the rest of the most improbable comebacks in baseball history on Baseball-Reference. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.