Sports Reference Blog

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.

Sports Reference has incorporated thousands of updates, additions and improvements to its Men's College Basketball data on the Sports Reference College Basketball site thanks to the efforts of Dave Quinn.

This expansion of data runs from 1950-51 through 2006-07, with a particular concentration in 1998-99 and 1999-00 (with over 20,000 new datapoints added to those seasons). The most-impacted statistics are Minutes Played (9,165 additions), Defensive Rebounds (8,910 additions), Offensive Rebounds (7,060 additions), Turnovers (5,283 additions), Personal Fouls (3,573 additions) and Games Started (3,072 additions). Every statistical category had over 100 updates or additions. Read the rest of this entry

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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We are pleased to announce that our partnership with Stats Perform Opta has expanded to include six new leagues of advanced data.  This data not only includes the current seasons, but also 3-4 historical seasons.

The new leagues are

• Germany's 2.Bundesliga
• France's Ligue 2
• Italy's Serie B
• Spain's La Segunda (La Liga 2)
• Belgium's Jupiler Pro League, and
• Argentina's Primera Division and Copa de la Liga

These pair with

• England's Championship
• United States and Canada's MLS
• Mexico's Liga MX
• Brazil's Serie A
• The Netherlands' Eredivisie
• Portugal's Primeira Liga
• Conmebol's Copa Libertadores
• UEFA's Europa Conference League

To form our Next 14 tier for scouting reports and the like.   This is all described on our scouting reports explainer.

Thank you for your support.  It allows use to expand our stats in more directions and continue to serve you better.

Hockey Reference recently extended its season-level Time on Ice coverage back through the 1997-98 season. Before this update, our coverage went back to the 1998-99 season. In conjunction with this update, we also cleaned up many season-level Time on Ice totals from 1998-99 through 2007-08 that were discrepant with the game-level totals. Our season-level TOI now matches the sum of our game-level TOI, which was first recorded in 1997-98. You can see the 1997-98 NHL Time on Ice leaders here (Ray Bourque led the league).

We've added a brand new stat to PFR. It's Success Rate, one of the coolest and most interesting new advanced stats to enter the football discussion in the last few years.

Success Rate starts with the idea that not all plays in football have the same objective. On first and 10, a two-yard run would be considered a bad result; on third and one, that same two-yard run would be celebrated for moving the chains. This means we can't just use stats like yards to measure how effective an offense is. Instead, Success Rate shows us how effective players and teams are at staying on schedule and creating productive plays.

As a result, a successful play depends on the context. We define it as a play that gains at least 40% of yards required on 1st down, 60% of yards required on 2nd down, and 100% on 3rd or 4th down.

As mentioned, it can be measured for both players and teams, for passing, rushing, and receiving. For example, here are the leaders in 2022 in rushing yards per attempt:

In SABR's Fall 2019 Baseball Research Journal Ed Coen produced some remarkable research on the history of franchise nicknames.

Coen wrote:

Of the major league teams that trace their history before 1960, most started out with several short-term unofficial nicknames or even no nickname at all. Although several reputable sources provide a history of these nicknames, there are numerous contradictions between the available sources, and sometimes even when these sources agree, they conflict with the original sources. In other words, they do not reflect what the team was actually known as at the time.

Coen then performed exhaustive research using local newspapers to find out what teams were actually most commonly referred to at the time in their home cities. Thanks to his research, we are now able to use the actual names these teams were mostly commonly known as locally at the time on Baseball Reference. In many cases, you'll see the teams had no nicknames at all and were just known for the city and league they played in. Below is a list of the changes we have made: Read the rest of this entry

Believe it or not, we’re in the second half of August and the summer is winding down. That means that our summer interns are wrapping up their final projects with us before beginning their next adventures in the Fall. We are very proud of our summer internship program at Sports Reference and we were once again fortunate to welcome another talented group. Here’s a brief intro to each member of that class…

Brendan Avey, Data Intern, is a rising junior at the University of Notre Dame studying Business Analytics and Economics. He roots for the New York Rangers, Giants, and Knicks, but currently lives in northern Virginia.

Brendan will return to campus this fall in search of a management consulting internship before studying abroad in Dublin, Ireland, in the spring. His favorite project was implementing player nicknames into our Hockey Reference site.

Sara Barshap, Data Engineering Intern, recently graduated from Villanova University, where she studied Information Systems and Business Analytics. She is enrolled in a Master of Data Science program at Rice University. Sara has lived in New Jersey her whole life and is an avid New York Rangers fan who enjoys watching golf.

Sara interned for the first half of the Summer before leaving to start a full-time role at FanDuel as a Sports Trader. Her favorite project this Summer was writing code that manipulated certain features of the PFRef fantasy section to improve engagement and accessibility.

Tim Clay, Data Intern, is a rising second-year student at Northeastern University, majoring in Data Science. Having grown up just outside Boston, he is a fan of all Boston sports teams, but is an especially devoted Red Sox fan.

This fall, Tim will continue to take classes on campus, while also assisting Northeastern's varsity baseball team as a student manager. Over the course of the summer, Tim has tackled several projects, his favorite being gathering biographical information for every potential draft pick in this summer's NBA Draft.

Jordan Doyle, Engineering Intern, attends Kalamazoo College pursuing a major in Computer Science and minor in Computational Mathematics. She is a Detroit-native and a women’s lacrosse enthusiast.

Jordan will be headed back to Kalamazoo, Michigan in the fall to start her sophomore year. Her favorite project this summer was adding WNBA awards voting data to Basketball Reference to match NBA functionality.

Alison Gilmore, Data Intern, attends Syracuse University and is majoring in Sport Analytics. Unlike many Pennsylvania natives, Alison roots for collegiate and professional teams across the country. Topping the list are the Baltimore Orioles, Indianapolis Colts, Atlanta Dream, Oklahoma State Cowboys/Cowgirls (her dad is an alumnus), and of course, the Syracuse Orange. She is also an avid golf fan.

Alison will be graduating in May, looking to work in analytics for a Major League Baseball team. Her favorite project this summer was collecting data on WNBA assistant coaches to add to the site.

Amanda Le, Product Intern, is a junior at Rice University studying Cognitive Sciences and Entrepreneurship. A Bay Area native, she loves the SF Giants and hiking with her family!

Amanda will return to school in Houston in the fall. One of her favorite projects was collecting and prioritizing user feedback on the Immaculate Grid in order to prioritize next steps for development.

Kristiana Passeri, Marketing Intern, attends DePaul University and is majoring in Digital Marketing. She has lived in the Chicago suburbs her whole live and is thus a Chicago sports fan—primarily the Bears and Fire—and is also an avid FC Barcelona, Argentine/US soccer, and Formula 1 fan.

Kristiana will be graduating in the fall and looking to start the new year in a marketing role within sports. Her favorite project this summer was executing an email campaign promoting engagement for the Women’s World Cup, as well as FBref tools to add another level to the fan experience.

Eric Tran, Business Analytics Intern, is a Cal Poly alum and current master’s student in Business Analytics at UCLA. As a Northern California native, he is a Golden State Warriors and San Jose Earthquakes (and soon-to-be Bay FC!) fan, while also rooting for Real Madrid and Cal Poly/UCLA women’s and men’s basketball.

After graduating from UCLA in the fall, Eric plans to start a career in (sports) analytics and data science. His favorite projects at Sports Reference this summer involved analyzing business metrics for FBref as a result of marketing activations surrounding the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup and 2023 Women’s World Cup and data/modeling work on grid difficulty for SR’s Immaculate Grid.

Jhalen Vines, Marketing Intern, is a Sports Management minor and Communication Studies minor at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. As a native of Charlotte, NC he is a fan of all things Carolina: the Tar Heels, the Panthers, the Hornets; even minor league baseball team Charlotte Knights.

In the fall, Jhalen will be starting his senior year at Temple while also playing rugby for the university’s club team. His favorite project this summer was working on an influencer marketing campaign for Pro Football Reference on Youtube, partnering with content creators to promote the powerful sports research tool Stathead as well as the viral online trivia game Immaculate Grid.

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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Sports Reference is happy to announce that we have resolved a long-standing issue on our College Football site: the fact that our statistics from before 2002 were a mixture of totals that sometimes included and sometimes excluded bowl games. Thanks to our friends at Sports Data Research, our pre-2002 statistics have uniformly had bowl games removed. This is in line with official NCAA policy. So you'll notice that today we no longer list Ron Dayne as the all-time FBS rushing leader, but rather Donnel Pumphrey. In the future we hope to have statistics for all (or most) bowl games, which will allow for users of our site to add them in (or back them out) if they'd like. For more on this change, I'm including a blog post from SDR's Shane Holmes below. Read the rest of this entry