Sports Reference Blog

Major Improvements to Historical NBA Box Scores

Posted by Mike Lynch on July 7, 2021

We are thrilled to announce that we have added thousands of data points to our collection of historical NBA box scores (which includes at least a partial box score for every game in NBA history). The new data is courtesy web developer and statistician Justin Kubatko, who once upon a time built Basketball Reference.

For an overview of how complete our box score data now is, please visit our Data Coverage Summaries for the regular season and postseason.

For your convenience, here's some quick bullet-points on the improvements:

    ●As before, our coverage of Points, Field Goals Made and Free Throws Made is 100% complete all-time back to 1946-47 (the 1st year of the NBA's precursor, the BAA). Similarly, Three-Pointers made coverage is 100% complete back to 1979-80, which was the first season the Three-Point shot was in the NBA.
    ●Free Throw Attempts are 100% complete for regular season games back to 1958-59 and over 99% complete back to 1948-49. Free Throw Attempts are 100% complete all-time (since 1946-47) for postseason games.
    ●Field Goal Attempts, Total Rebounds and Assists are 100% complete for regular season games back to 1982-83 and over 99% complete back to 1975-76. For the postseason, they are 100% complete back to 1962-63.
    ●Personal Fouls are 100% complete for regular season games back to 1982-83 and over 99% complete back to 1975-76. For the postseason, they are 100% complete back to 1948-49.
    ●Games Started are 100% complete back to 1975-76 for regular season games and 1973-74 for postseason games.
    ●Minutes Played are complete back to 1982-83 for regular season games and 1974-75 for postseason games.
    ●Three-Point Attempts are complete back to 1983-84 for regular season games and 100% complete all-time (since 1979-80) for postseason.
    ●With a few exceptions, Offensive Rebounds, Defensive Rebounds, Steals, Blocks and Turnovers are complete back to 1983-84 in the regular season. Steals, Blocks and Turnovers are complete back to 1982-83 for the postseason.

If you are a Stathead user, our tools such as the Player Game Finder, Team Game Finder, Player Streak Finder, Team Streak Finder, Head 2 Head Finder and Player Span Finder will soon have updated language to reflect the inclusion of this expanded data which will make the tools even more powerful.

If you're not a Stathead user, but would like to run your own customized queries into our massive database, please visit Stathead.com and start your free one-month trial today!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2021 at 10:58 am and is filed under Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Major Improvements to Historical NBA Box Scores”

  1. David Says: July 7th, 2021 at 11:44 pm

    I'm glad the site has play-by-play for all games starting with 1996-97, but I'm wondering if NBA teams have tapes of games from before then that would allow us to do play-by-play data for those games.

  2. Chas Says: July 8th, 2021 at 9:45 am

    Glad to see Sports Reference and Justin Kubatko working together again. He’s the best in the business for this type of data so hopefully there will be more to come!

  3. Mike Lynch Says: July 8th, 2021 at 9:57 am

    Thank you, David. Glad you enjoy the Play-by-play. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has a complete collection of games from back then and even if there was, it's impossible to say how a game was officially scored at the time given all the judgment calls made in the process of creating a play by play and box score (assists, blocks, steals, even rebounds can all be subjective). Without primary documents, it's therefore impossible

  4. Mario Says: July 8th, 2021 at 11:34 am

    Hi Mike. I think you can draw on information from Harvey Pollack's databases, the annual Harvey Pollack NBA Statistical Yearbook. Have you ever tried to contact Harvey's son Ron or the Philadelphia 76ers?

  5. Mike Lynch Says: July 8th, 2021 at 3:40 pm

    there's a few things like dunks, plus/minus, shot attempts blocked that we could extend a little further back with that info, and we might at some point. none of it covers anything league-wide previous to 1988 (dunks), though.