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Archive for the 'Trivia' Category

Basketball Reference Adds Pages For All Draftees in NBA History

9th November 2021

While Basketball Reference has been creating unique player pages for everyone selected in the NBA draft for the past couple of years, many people who never played in the NBA but were selected in the draft could only find their names in our draft tables. We have decided to rectify this by creating player pages for every draftee in NBA history, dating back to the inaugural 1947 BAA Draft. Due to historical drafts being much longer than the current two-round format, this has led to almost 4000 new player pages. These player pages include biographical information, links to relevant college/international pages and family connections where available.

Some notable people that are getting pages as a result of this addition:

- Len Bias, 2nd overall pick in the 1986 draft who tragically passed away days later
- Lusia Harris, 137th overall pick in the 1977 draft and the first woman ever selected
- Terry Stotts, 38th overall pick in the 1980 draft who went on to coach the Portland Trail Blazers
- Carl Lewis, 208th overall pick in the 1984 draft who had set Olympic track and field records
- Phil Elderkin, 205th overall pick in the 1973 draft who was a reporter selected as a joke by the Cavaliers' Bill Fitch
- Dave Winfield, 79th overall pick in the 1973 draft who went on to have a Hall of Fame career in Major League Baseball.
- Jay Bilas, 108th overall pick in the 1986 draft who went on to be a successful college basketball broadcaster

We give big thanks to data developer Charlotte Eisenberg for her time organizing and collecting data for this project.

Please let us know via our feedback form if you have any questions or comments.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Draft, Features, History, Trivia | Comments Off on Basketball Reference Adds Pages For All Draftees in NBA History

Home Run Derby and Futures Game Data Added to B-R

2nd July 2021

We've always had Home Run Derby and Futures Game information on the Bullpen, Baseball-Reference's user-managed wiki, but we have now added participation data for those events to the main Baseball-Reference site.

Home Run Derby champions, as evidenced by 3-time winner Ken Griffey Jr., now have that marked among their accomplishment "bling" at the top of their player page. In addition, if you scroll down to the Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards and Honors table, Home Run Derby participation is included as its own section now, with wins bolded. Because this is just participation data, you still have to go to the Bullpen if you want to see the actual scores of the Derbies.

Similarly, if a player participated in a Futures Game, using Joey Gallo as an example, that appears now in a new section of the Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards and Honors table. This data also appears on their minor league page in a column of the Prospect Rankings table. Each Futures Game is linked to the relevant Bullpen page if you want to see the full roster that year as well as the score and relevant events.

We thank intern Jeremy Frank for his work in collecting and preparing this data for this project. If you want to share any feedback or suggestions, please send us your thoughts via our feedback form.

Posted in All-Star, Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Bullpen, Data, Features, History, Trivia | Comments Off on Home Run Derby and Futures Game Data Added to B-R

Kobe & LeBron’s High School Stats Now on BBR

10th November 2020

On Basketball-Reference, we have a special page for Michael Jordan where we house his statistics from his high school and college career. Two other superstars that have been in the spotlight since high school are Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, and we have added special pages for them that display their statistics during high school.

Kobe Bryant's high school page allows you to follow his improvement over his years at Lower Merion, along with notes marking milestones such as his first 40-point game or his McDonalds All-American honoring. The page also includes Bryant's preseason games for the first half of his NBA career. We give special thanks to Todd Spehr for compiling and donating these records and notes.

LeBron James' high school page tracks his statistics at Saint Vincent-Saint Mary in Akron before entering the NBA, with full coverage of makes, attempts and rebounds.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, you can contact us via our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Trivia | Comments Off on Kobe & LeBron’s High School Stats Now on BBR

Gap Years on Basketball Reference

14th August 2020

Thanks to work from summer intern Amy Huddell and the research of APBR President Emeritus Robert Bradley, Basketball Reference has greatly expanded its database of gap years for NBA players. Specifically we've added 704 new records in addition to the previous gap year data we had on the site. This includes mid-season career interruptions, first-season injuries and situations where they were still on the roster for their final season but did not play.

Often mid-season career interruptions are injury-related, such as Derrick Rose's ACL in 2012-13 or Greg Oden's various knee ailments. Occasionally there are other reasons like Robert Reid in 1982-83 voluntarily retiring to pursue the ministry or Red Morrison in 1956-57 who went into the construction business before making a return the next season. There are a couple of players such as Charlie Paulk and Dick Rosenthal who had gap years due to military service.

Notable end-of-career notes that we've added include Wilt Chamberlain sitting out his final year under contract with the Lakers and Alex Groza being suspended indefinitely for his involvement in the CCNY point shaving scandal.

Another gap year situation is players in international leagues between getting drafted and making their NBA debut, or players extending their careers internationally. Recent examples of this that were added in this batch include Patrick Beverley and Stephon Marbury.

We hope that adding this context to player pages helps people browsing the site understand their careers a little better. Thanks again to Amy Huddell and Robert Bradley for their help with this project. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, History, Trivia | 2 Comments »

NCAA Tournament Starters Complete Back to 1977

16th July 2020

Thanks in part to work from our intern Ryan Sullivan, College Basketball Reference now has starter and reserve designations for all NCAA Tournament games back to 1977. We previously could only claim 100% starter/reserve data back to 1994. Of course, this supplements our Final Four starter/reserve data which is already complete back to 1955. This data can be searched in our NCAA Tournament Player Game Finder.

Some searches that can be updated with these additions:

- Sean Higgins joins the list of reserve players with 30 points in a game, reaching that mark in the Elite Eight of the 1989 NCAA Tournament. He also joins the list of players with 100 points off the bench in their tourney careers.

- Reggie Theus is one point shy of Donte DiVincenzo for most points scored as a reserve in a single tournament, in 1977 with UNLV.

We hope you enjoy this addition to the site. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Posted in Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, History, Play Index, Trivia | Comments Off on NCAA Tournament Starters Complete Back to 1977

Teammates/Opponents Finder Now on Basketball-Reference

31st January 2020

Earlier this season, there was some buzz that LeBron James had lost to Kemba Walker for the first time in their 29 head-to-head appearances. However, did you ever consider who LeBron loses most often to? If you set a minimum of 10 head-to-heads (regular season and playoffs), that would be Patrick McCaw, who is 4-1 against James in the regular season and 8-1 against him in the playoffs.

This is now more easily searchable thanks to Basketball-Reference's new Teammates And Opponents tool, located in the Frivolities section of the site. This will produce a list of either every player your choice, in this case, LeBron, has played against, or played with. As an example of the teammates function, here's a link to every player Russell Westbrook has played with. You may be surprised that among players who've been in 50 games with Westbrook, Hasheem Thabeet has the highest winning percentage with him.

So try out our new Teammates and Opponents tool and see what interesting results you can find! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Features, History, Trivia | 7 Comments »

Reliever of the Month Award Added For Baseball-Reference

22nd January 2020

For April 2017, MLB awarded Reliever of the Month honors to Greg Holland (NL) and Tommy Kahnle (AL) and has kept up this award through the 2019 season. With 3 years of the award in the books, we have added it to Baseball-Reference's repertoire of awards history. This will appear in the Leaderboards, Awards and Honors section of player pages as Monthly Awards. Here's a link to Edwin Diaz, who currently leads with 5 Reliever of the Month honors.

Check out the full list of Reliever of the Month recipients at Baseball-Reference.com. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Baseball Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following us!

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Trivia | 2 Comments »

Coaching History Added For All Head Coaches in NFL History

18th November 2019

With 6 new debuts this season, there have now been exactly 500 people in NFL history to be credited as head coach of a NFL team. Many of those coaches had to work their way up the ranks or prove their success elsewhere before getting their chance at the top position in the NFL. For a while, Pro-Football-Reference had full coaching history on the pages of modern coaches such as Bill Belichick, so you could trace his rise from a special assistant on the 1975 Colts to where he is today. However, we did not include that information for many historical coach profiles until now, as we have now filled in the coaching history of every head coach in NFL history where applicable.

While in today's environment it's more common to hire a coach with NFL assistant experience over a college coach, in the past many great coaches jumped directly from college to the NFL. Paul Brown rose from nearly a decade coaching at Massillon Washington High School to three years at Ohio State, and following two years coaching the Naval Station Great Lakes team got the call to coach the nascent Cleveland franchise. Sid Gillman was a head coach at Miami of Ohio and Cincinnati before getting his first NFL head coaching spot with the Los Angeles Rams.

The addition of this information also helps fill out NFL coaching trees, as displayed by the Employed and Employed By tables on our coach pages. Looking at Brown's Employed table, he employed future Hall of Fame coaches Weeb Ewbank (as a tackles coach) and Bill Walsh (as a QB and WR coach). A common narrative today is how the assistants of Bill Belichick have not gone on to solid head coaching careers, and similar things were said about Vince Lombardi's coaching branches, which included folks like Bill Austin, Norb Hecker and Mike McCormack.

Assistant coaches did not become the norm until around the 1940s, although even in the early days of the NFL there were cases such as Dim Batterson of coaches assisting before rising to the top post. In those days player-coaches were common, and most of them never went on to a different coaching position, which is why those coaching history tables will mostly remain bare. There were exceptions, such as Bob Dove who was a player-coach for the Chicago Rockets and would go on to take assistant positions with the Lions and Bills before becoming a long-time assistant for Youngstown State. College coaches were also common in the early days of the NFL, such as Ed Robinson, who began his coaching career way back in 1896 with Nebraska before eventually coaching the Providence Steam Roller for one season.

We give thanks to the Professional Football Researchers Association and the work of John Maxymuk who had done extensive research on NFL head coaching history, along with additional newspaper verification by Alex Bonilla. In the future we may also fill in the coaching history of offensive and defensive coordinators we are currently lacking that information for. If you have any corrections or additional information to share or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Pro Football Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following PFR!

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Trivia | 1 Comment »

PFR Adds Preseason Over/Unders and Super Bowl Odds

6th May 2019

Pro-Football-Reference has added preseason Super Bowl odds back to 1977, as well as preseason over/unders on win totals back to 1989. This information can be found on a team's season page in their information profile. For example, you can go to the 2011 Eagles page and quickly spot they were +800 to win the Super Bowl before the season, and that the over/under for their win total was set at 10.5. (They would go on to finish under that year.)

You can also see the preseason Super Bowl odds and over/unders for all teams in a season by going to a league season page, and then following the Preseason Odds link located in the Other tab. Here's a link to the 2018 odds table, where you can spot the Super Bowl-winning Patriots having the best odds before the season and the highest-set over/under (which they pushed on).

One question that can be answered with this information is: who were the unlikeliest Super Bowl winners based on these preseason odds? Here's a look at the top 10 longest odds since 1977.

RAM 1999 +15000
NWE 2001 +6000
SFO 1981 +5000
PHI 2017 +4000
RAI 1980 +3500
WAS 1982 +3500
NYG 2007 +3000
RAV 2000 +2200
NYG 2011 +2200
NOR 2009 +2000

Also, here's a look at the teams since 1989 that outperformed their preseason over/unders the most.

O/U Wins Over by
RAM 1999 5.5 13 7.5
SDG 2004 4.5 12 7.5
PIT 2004 7.5 15 7.5
ATL 1998 7 14 7
MIN 1998 8.5 15 6.5
CLT 1999 6.5 13 6.5
ATL 2008 4.5 11 6.5
CAR 1996 5.5 12 6.5
CAR 2015 8.5 15 6.5
CHI 2001 7 13 6

A special thanks to sportsoddshistory.com for contributing to this addition to our site. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form. Also, please keep your eyes peeled for similar content coming to our other sites in the future.

Posted in Announcement, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Super Bowl, Trivia | 1 Comment »

“First x QB Starts” Searches Now Possible on PFR’s Player Game Finder

28th January 2019

A couple of weeks, Pro-Football-Reference added a feature to its Player Game Finder tool where you can now filter games by whether a player started or came in as a substitution. While we have that data available for all offensive and defensive players back to just 1999, we actually have data for starting quarterbacks all the way back to 1950. So with that information, we have now added another section to the Player Game Finder where you can search for a range of QB career starts. Most statheads will likely use this for searches involving a QB's first career start or to find cumulative statistics through a QB's first x starts.

Here are some examples of searches you can now execute with this new addition:

Patrick Mahomes has made 17 career regular season starts at QB and continuously set "first x QB starts" records in 2018. Right now, he has a 6-TD and 587-yard lead over Kurt Warner's first 17 starts at QB. He is also just ahead of Warner and Dan Marino for best passer rating in a QB's first 17 starts.

Lamar Jackson appeared in several games in the first half of 2018 but didn't get his first start until Week 11, when he dazzled with 119 rushing yards in a win over Cincinnati. That day he set a post-merger record for most rushing yards in a player's first start at QB, passing Randall Cunningham and Tim Tebow.

Nick Mullens made his first career start on Thursday Night Football and torched the Raiders for 3 TDs and a 151.9 passer rating. That's the highest passer rating of any QB who's made their first NFL start in a non-Sunday game. Honorable mention goes to AFL-era Patriots primary punter Tom Yewcic, who got his first start at QB at the age of 30 on a Friday night and posted a passer rating of 152.6 in a win over the Bills.

Check out our Player Game Finder and see if you can find any other interesting statistics to share! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Trivia | 1 Comment »