The writing was on the wall for the San Antonio Spurs. At the end of the third quarter of Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals, they trailed the Oklahoma City Thunder by 26 points. They had lost three of their last four games vs OKC and found themselves overwhelmed by the size and physicality of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and, most surprisingly, Enes Kanter.

On the San Antonio bench, Tim Duncan pulled Gregg Popovich aside for a quick conversation. After the conversation, Duncan played the entire fourth quarter. Even as the game entered clear garbage time and Andre Miller and Kyle Anderson replaced Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard, Duncan stayed on the floor. Read the rest of this entry

If you follow me on twitter, you know that this work has been a long time coming. Starting last summer, Adam Wodon, Adam Darowski, and I started throwing around ideas for a more mobile-friendly version of our sites. Our mobile experience is probably charitably described as limited and functional and with now over 2/3rd's of our visits coming from handheld devices, we clearly needed to up our game there.

This led to complete review of what we have on our sites and how we present that data on desktop and how we can make that usable on a small screen. It's not easy and after months of design, user testing and work, we have an approach that we believe will serve both desktop and mobile users better than they are now. This is the first in a series of posts we'll publish about our redesign.
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The hype entering the 2016 NBA Free Agency period suggested that this would be the wildest one in league history. An unprecedented salary cap spike gave essentially every team in the league enough financial leeway to aggressively pursue ways of improving their team.

At the same time, while many of the league's best players were set to become free agents, there were few true superstars in the market. On paper, it seemed extremely unlikely that either of the best players on the market this year - Kevin Durant or LeBron James - would leave teams that at least made the Conference Finals and, in LeBron's case, hoisted the trophy as winners of the 2016 NBA Finals. As basketball fans prepared for nuttiness, it seemed just as possible that this year's feeding frenzy would be a little more laid-back than we expected.
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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.
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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.

About 9 months ago, we added NFL Players of the Week back to 1997 on Pro Football Reference. Shortly after that, we were able to extend that data back to 1989. Now, thanks to an assist from football researcher extraordinaire John Turney, we have completed this data back to 1984, which was the first year that the NFL handed out these awards.

These winners can be seen on the pages we have built for each NFL Week (such as Week 1 of 1984) and also in this register of the all-time NFC/AFC Player of the Week winners. You'll notice that Special Teamers were first awarded in 1993.

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