Games Started have been officially tracked as an NBA statistic since 1970-71, but comprehensive season-level data on games started is only currently in the public realm back to 1981-82. Thanks to old media guides we have been able to flesh out this coverage for some players and teams (most notably the 76ers due to the legendary efforts of Harvey Pollack). Basketball Reference is happy to announce that we have added regular season starts for the Knicks back to the 1964-65 season. So, for instance, we are now able to present that Willis Reed started 613 of his 650 Knicks games and that Walt Frazier started 666 of his 759 games with the franchise. It is also interesting to note the pattern of the number of starts for Bill Bradley and Cazzie Russell during the Knicks glory years of the late 60s and early 70s. This information is thankfully printed in the Knicks media guide and we should be able to add playoff starts for the franchise back to 1954, as well. Though starts have only been 'officially' tracked since 1970-71, obviously it was something that teams could reliably compile for earlier years, as the Knicks have done. Additionally, we have recently found games started for the Chicago Bulls back to 1970-71, so we hope to soon have an extra decade of starts coverage for the Bulls.

Pro Football Reference has added game-by-game player punting stats to the site. This new data appears in our box scores and player gamelogs. It also queryable in Stathead Football's tools such as the Player Game Finder. Here, for instance, is a search for the most punt yards in a game from 1950-59. We'd like to thank Ken Pullis and Pete Palmer for contributing this data.

Thanks to our friends at Retrosheet, we have added Play-by-Play for 3,868 games from 1912 to 1972. The additions mean we now have Play-by-Play for all games back to 1969. Before this update our coverage was 100% back to 1973. Additionally, we have Play-by-Play coverage for over 99% of games in each season back through 1957. You can see our full NL/AL/Federal League Play-by-Play coverage map by season here.

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As the 2024 season begins, we have made some updates to our Wins Above Replacement calculations on Baseball Reference. You may notice some small changes to figures as you browse the site. As always, you can find full details on how we calculate WAR here. Read the rest of this entry

We are excited to announce that Sports Reference's College Basketball site has added 14 new seasons worth of player and team statistics for Division I women's basketball. This takes our coverage all the way back to 1987-88, when a balanced Louisiana Tech squad featuring the likes of Teresa Weatherspoon, Venus Lacy and Erica Westbrooks won the National Championship, while Weatherspoon, Sue Wicks and Michelle Edwards shared the various national player of the year honors. Some of the most notable players in basketball history have had their statistics added to the site with this update. They include, among others: Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Rebecca Lobo, Chamique Holdsclaw and Tamika Catchings. Read the rest of this entry

Pro Football Reference is pleased to announce that it has added full game-by-game (and also year-by-year) Sack Yards Lost data for all passers (NFL, AFL and AAFC) back to 1947, which was the first season Sack Yards Lost were tracked separately and not merely removed from rushing yardage (which is why many passers before 1947 had negative rushing yards). Read the rest of this entry

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.'

You may have noticed that, as of the end of the 2023 MLB season, the counter on the front page of Baseball-Reference indicated that there had been 23,115 players in major league history and that that number now says 23,114.

This change is due to the hard work and dedication of the SABR Biographical Research Committee, which continually makes new discoveries about players in the early days of the game, in particular. In this case, a mistaken identity involving a player who caught one inning for the 1900 St. Louis Cardinals has been resolved. Previously, it was thought that this catching appearance was made by Henry Edward Stein. However, it has been discovered via the Sporting News archives (which all SABR members get complementary access to as a membership perk) that the appearance was actually made by Tom Stanton. Stanton also appeared in one game for the 1904 Chicago Cubs, and thus already had a player record. This is why we now show 23,114 all-time major league players instead of 23,115.

If you peruse the NBA Guide (the name of the NBA's official record book produced before every season) you'll notice that most team scoring records for quarters are restricted to 'since 1954-55', which is when the NBA first introduced the shot clock. Before that, games tended to be lower scoring, particularly in late and close situations as teams held out for possession of the ball at the end of the game. It is also often hard to find record of how much was scored in a given quarter before the shot clock as the league was generally less popular and recaps, let alone box scores, were less thorough. However, at Basketball-Reference we view it as important to attempt to preserve as many recordable facts about these games as possible. We are frequently making minor improvements to our box scores in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Thanks to some help from NBA research ace Todd Spehr, we have recently added quarter-by-quarter scoring to the vast majority of the BAA and NBA games from 1946-47 through 1953-54 that were previously missing these details. Before this recent work, we were missing these details on 709 games. We were able to add complete data for 569 of them and partial data for 62 of them. This leaves fewer than 100 games completely lacking scoring breakdowns. For instance, what the NBA considers the first game in the history of the league (though it was actually a BAA game) between the Knicks and Huskies on November 1, 1946 now has a complete scoring breakdown, with the Knicks winning despite coming up with just six points in the third quarter. Chicago Stags home games in this era might be particularly fun to look at because, as a marketing tactic, they decided to play 15-minute quarters in several home games such as this, this and this. Minutes played were not yet an official statistic, so it's unclear if any Stags were averaging over 50 MPG for some home games. We hope you enjoy these new additions.

We have recently greatly expanded our coverage of match-by-match player assists in Premier League play on FBref. Until a few months ago we only had coverage back through the 2014-15 season. Last week we completed an effort to compile assists for all matches all the way back to the first season of the Premier League in 1992-93. This has also allowed us to make corrections to season totals, which should now match the sums of the match-level statistics. For instance, here you can see the 1999-00 Premier League Match Logs for David Beckham have all of the assists filled in. These assists are also searchable in our brand new product, Stathead FBref.