2nd November 2023
Basketball Reference has added assistant coaches to our WNBA team pages and also created pages for these assistant coaches and added assistant coaching stints to pages for head coaches. We would like to thank one of our 2023 summer interns, Alison Gilmore, for her exhaustive research in tracking these down. This information was difficult to find in many cases, but she was able to add over 1,000 datapoints. If you notice that we're missing any of these coaching stints, please let us know.
Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data | Comments Off on WNBA Assistant Coaches Added to 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
29th September 2023
While player turnovers have only been officially tracked in NBA games since 1977-78, team turnovers have been tracked in official scorer's reports for nearly a decade longer. Per the official NBA Guide, team turnovers have been compiled since 1970-71. However, the official NBA Guide also only shows team and opponent turnovers comprehensively since 1973-74. Team and opponent turnover totals for the 1970-71, 1971-72 and 1972-73 seasons have always been a bit of a mystery. Ostensibly the NBA has these totals, but for some reason they have never been printed in NBA Guides.
Well, we're proud to announce that this mystery has been solved and there's one man to thank: Harvey Pollack.
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Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Stat Questions | 1 Comment »
18th August 2023
Basketball Reference is thrilled to announced that it has added arena information for every game in NBA (including BAA) and ABA history to the site. We believe this to be the first time this data has been compiled so comprehensively. It can be viewed on our league-wide schedule pages and also on our box scores, such as this one for a 76ers/Bullets game played at Boehm Junior High School in Yardley, PA.
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Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data | Comments Off on Arena Information for Every Game in NBA & ABA History Added to Basketball Reference
11th August 2023
Basketball Reference has added awards voting data for many WNBA awards to its database. This information can be accessed via the pages for individual awards and clicking a link for full voting. For instance, our page of WNBA MVPs has a 'voting' column where you can see every player who received votes for various awards in that season. Here, for instance, are the 2022 WNBA awards votes. This information goes all the way back to the league's inaugural season in 1997. Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, Data | Comments Off on WNBA Award Voting Added to Basketball Reference
24th May 2023

We've just launched a very exciting new tool on Stathead Basketball! It's called the Versus Finder and it's the ultimate way to compare player and team stats. Here's everything you need to know about it! Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Stathead | Comments Off on Versus Finder Launches on Stathead Basketball
19th May 2023
Basketball-Reference has edited its box score for the Western Division Round Robin Playoff game between the Rochester Royals and Fort Wayne Pistons on March 21, 1954. In addition to adding newly discovered assists for all players in the game, we have edited our previous total of seven assists for Cal Christensen to 10 assists, giving him a 'new' triple-double. We'll explain what we mean by that a bit below. Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, History | Comments Off on Newly ‘Discovered’ Triple-Double Added to Basketball Reference
16th May 2023
All our player pages recently received a big update. We added a new table showing every player's performances over their last five games. It looks like this:

Pretty cool! This is on all sites (except FBref, where it's still in development), but right now you can only see it on the sports that are currently in season.
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Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on New Feature! How We Added the Last Five Games Table to Player Pages
28th March 2023
Eagle-eyed Basketball Reference users may have noticed a recent addition to the site: WNBA Executives! Our data developer Charlotte Eisenberg identified the executive-chain (which we define as the executive in charge of player personnel decisions) for every WNBA franchise. This has allowed us to add several new features. For instance, Carol Blazejowski now has a page documenting her draft picks, trades and free agent signing during her 13 years as the player personnel executive with the New York Liberty. Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com | Comments Off on WNBA GMs Added to Basketball Reference
10th March 2023
---UPDATED TO ACCOUNT FOR FULLER DATA SINCE 1990-91 ON 3/15/23---
While the NBA has only had a Defensive Player of the Year Award since 1982-83, it has named NBA All-Defensive teams since 1968-69. The All-Defensive teams allow fans to know which defenders were held in the highest regard, but don't necessarily tell us who was considered the best defender in a given season. Thanks to the research of Josh Elias and Sumitro Datta, we have added voting for the full history of the NBA All-Defensive teams, which allows us to get closer to answering that question.
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Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, History | Comments Off on NBA All-Defensive Team Voting Added to Basketball Reference
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