Sports Reference Blog

We just wanted to quickly note that Similarity Scores have been updated on player pages through 2014-15. Similarity Scores attempts to find players whose careers were similar in terms of quality and shape (but not style of play). If you go to Alex Ovechkin's page and scroll down to the Similarity Scores, you'll see that through ten seasons, his career been most similar to Jaromir Jagr's. When comparing entire careers, he scores as most similar to Sidney Crosby.

You may have noticed a new search bar in the main menu of Pro Football Reference's Play Index. Via this search bar, you can now run Game Finder and Season Finder searches specific to a single player. For instance, if you type in Peyton Manning's name, click on the link that appears, click "Game Finder search" and then "Go To Page", you will be taken here. From this page, you can run searches across Peyton Manning's game logs. For instance:

• His career stats in the month of December
• His most TD passes in a playoff game
• His most 300-yard passing games in a season

Additionally, if you choose a season finder player search, you can sort a player's seasons.

You can also access these tools via player pages, by choosing the "Finders" links atop stat tables:

Thanks to our own research plus that of some helpful users (and especially to Rasmus Pianowski for doing a ton of research), we now know who threw every pick-six between 1970 and 2015, which lets us put up single season and career leaderboards as well as pick six logs (linked from the player headers) similar to the touchdown logs noting the game situation, returner, and more for every pick six thrown. Hopefully in the offseason we can extend this list back further but for now enjoy exploring 45 years worth of data.

We just wanted to quickly note that each season page now has a link under the "More" tab on the far right showing players who were born or died from the September preceding the season to the August following the season.

If you see any birth/death data missing that you're able to fill in, please let us know.

We have attended several columns of statistics to our team Schedule & Results pages for 2015-16. We have a page like this for each team, showing their results, as well as their upcoming games. As you can see on the page linked to, we've added a column showing shots, power play goals, power play opportunities, short-handed goals and penalty minutes for both teams. Additionally, attendance and length of game were recently added. The columns are all sortable by clicking in the top row, so you can easily find team season highs (or lows) in each statistic.

We have made a couple of additional statistics available for search in the Player Streak Finder in the Play Index. You can now search for longest streaks of times sacked (since 1981) and for streaks by completion percentage. Enjoy!

As we continue to work our way back on digitizing player statistics for old college basketball seasons, we are happy to announce the player stats for the 1994-95 season are now live on the site. You can see player leaders for the season here. Notably, Kurt Thomas became the third player to lead NCAA D-I in scoring and rebounding in the same season (28.9 PPG and 14.6 RPG). Here's the team stats page for UCLA, as the Bruins won their record 11th (and most recent) national championship.

The new season of statistics has also been synced into the Player Season Finder tool, so you can now make customized searches for player stats all the way back to 1994-95 (though we cannot yet calculate Win Shares for 1994-95). Here's a few examples:

• Since 1994-95, Kurt Thomas's 14.6 RPG in have been surpassed by only Tim Duncan's 14.7 RPG in 1996-97.
• Nelson Haggerty's 10.1 APG in 1994-95 are the most any player has averaged in a season over this span.
• Allen Iverson is the only player in our data to have over 200 combined steals in his freshman and sophomore seasons (The Answer was a freshman in 1994-95).
• Bonzi Wells's game was as unique as his name.

In the coming months and years, we hope to continue to add past seasons of player statistics, as well as team statistics.

Last month, we added full box scores for the 1983 & 1984 NBA Playoffs. Now, once again thanks to the help of Sean Burrill, we have added full box scores and game logs for the 1983-84 & 1984-85 NBA seasons. This means we now have a full box score for Michael Jordan's NBA debut (in which he was only the fourth leading scorer for his own team!). We also now have full game logs for Jordan's rookie season. This means we now have a stat line for pretty much every game Michael Jordan has played in since high school. Please let us know if you have any of his Tune Squad box scores, though.

We have also synched these box scores into the Play Index, allowing for searches further back in many non-scoring categories in the Player Game Finder and the Team Game Finder. Some sample searches now possible:

• Moses Malone's 27 rebounds against the Celtics on March 25, 1984 were the most in a single game in 1983-84.
• The most assists in a game in 1984-85 was 25 by Isiah Thomas on Feb. 13, 1985 against the Mavericks (led by 40 points from Thomas's friend Mark Aguirre).
• Ralph Sampson, who debuted in 1983-84, double-doubled in his first nine career games. Shaquille O'Neal is the only player to match that feat since.

These new box scores also add new seasons available for search in the Player Streak Finder, the Team Streak Finder, and the Head2Head Finder. For instance, we now have full game logs and stats for every matchup between 1984 Draft class rivals Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley.

Additionally, we have extended the single-game leaders links in our Leaders Index back to 1983-84. Kevin McHale's 56-point effort on March 3, 1985 now ranks as the fifth-best Game Score in our database. And we also now have the full Celtics box score from 9 days later, when Larry Bird one-upped his teammate with a 60-point game.

As a reminder, we do have every box score in NBA history on the site. They can be accessed via this menu. However, many of the older box scores are limited to only player FGs, FTs, and points. With our update, the boxes are complete back to 1983-84, though.

We also want to mention that there are a handful of games for 1983-84 and 1984-85 for which we are missing a few statistical categories. If you are able to help fill in any of the blanks, please let us know.

Here are the games with some missing columns of data (games with strike-throughs have been completed since the original blog post):

• Lakers at Blazers on November 19, 1983
• Nets at Spurs on November 19, 1983
• Bulls at Jazz on November 23, 1983
• Warriors at Clippers on December 2, 1983
• Pistons at Blazers on December 9, 1983
• Pistons at Bullets on January 3, 1984
• Spurs at Lakers on January 6, 1984
• Suns at Kings on January 7, 1984
• Mavericks at Rockets on February 2, 1984
• Nets at Bulls on February 4, 1984
• Clippers at Cavaliers on February 4, 1984
• Suns at Warriors on February 4, 1984
• Knicks at Rockets on February 4, 1984
• Bucks at Jazz on February 4, 1984
• Pacers at Bullets on February 4, 1984
• 76ers at Hawks on February 4, 1984
• Suns at Rockets on February 18, 1984
• Spurs at Sonics on March 16, 1984
• Warriors at Blazers on March 17, 1984
• Celtics at Knicks on March 22, 1984
• Hawks at Pacers on April 11, 1984
• Jazz at Suns on May 10, 1984
• Suns at Warriors on October 26, 1984
• Jazz at Warriors on November 3, 1984
• Nuggets at Rockets on February 2, 1985
• Clippers at Pistons on March 11, 1985
• Suns at Warriors on March 23, 1985
• Kings at Warriors on April 6, 1985

We have added NHL Rookies of the Month back to the 2005-06 season. If you have this info for any older seasons, please let us know. The Rookie of the Month winners can be accessed via our larger Awards section.

We made a small addition to the NFL Franchise Index Pages. The 7th column is now for division finish, so ,at a glance, you can see where a team finished with its division in every season. The full franchise history for every team can be accessed by clicking on any team name in this index.