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Basketball-Reference.com Reboot

Posted by Justin Kubatko on January 14, 2008

Finally, after months and months of programming, I am pleased to announce the reboot of Basketball-Reference.com. What's new? I'm glad you asked:

  • Current season stats
    The stats will now be updated on a daily basis. Everything will be updated: player pages, team pages, league pages, leader pages, etc. (XML Team is providing the current season stats.)
  • Sortable tables
    Almost all of the stat tables are now sortable. Just click on the column headings with the red text to sort the tables. I think you'll find this feature to be incredibly useful. For example, you can now look at a player's game log and quickly find their highest-scoring game, the game where they had the most turnovers, etc. Most tables can also be converted to CSV (comma-seaprated values) and PRE (preformatted text) formats.
  • More leader boards
    Leader boards have been expanded to include season, career, active, yearly, and game leaders for the regular season and playoffs. (Game leaders are since the 1986-87 regular season and 1996 playoffs.)
  • More fun stuff
    See which players share your birthday, or which players attended high school in your home state, or which players attended your favorite college. Want to know who had a big game last night? Check out the daily leaders.

With all of this good comes a little bad, most of it temporary:

  • The Full Court tools (player stats search, player comparison machine, etc.) need to be modified, so they won't be working right for a few days. This is the first project on my to-do list for this week.
  • The WNBA, NBDL, and NCAAM sections are down temporarily, but they will be back shortly.
  • The similarity scores on the player pages will be gone for a bit, but they will return in time.
  • Some links have changed.

Given the enormity of this project, I'm sure that there are going to be some wrinkles that need to be ironed out. I've turned on commenting for this post, so if you have any comments or questions about the reboot, please post them here or use the site's feedback submission form.

74 Responses to “Basketball-Reference.com Reboot”

  1. Kevin Says:

    Is the data available for download for personal analysis like at baseball and football reference?

  2. Justin Kubatko Says:

    Is the data available for download for personal analysis like at baseball and football reference?

    No, it's not. I'm sorry about that.

  3. Chris Says:

    Why did you use PER 36 minutes instead of 40 when Player Efficiency Rating is based on 40 minutes?

  4. Sean Says:

    I assume that the individual player game logs for playoff runs will reappear eventually?

  5. ronan Says:

    the new look is great, but I can't wait for boxscores/game logs prior to 86-87, this is still the most important part of this website, more than the (very usefull !) tools you're creating !

  6. Jared Wade Says:

    Looks great.

    Only problem I've found is that the Franchise Indexes no longer tell us how far the team went in the Playoffs each year. Having the info of "Lost in First Round," "Lost in ECF" or "Won NBA Finals" right there for every year was a great feature and amazingly convenient for checking how a team has done over the past few years. I like that you added the top scorer/rebounder/coach/etc, but Can we get this other vital info back?

  7. Justin Kubatko Says:

    Why did you use PER 36 minutes instead of 40 when Player Efficiency Rating is based on 40 minutes?

    Two comments: (1) PER is not based on 40 minutes per game and (2) I can't win here. You prefer per-40 to per-36, someone else prefers it the other way around, someone else wants per-48, etc. This is just a way to display the player's per minute production, so the multiplier is in some sense arbitrary. We can expect a solid starter to play about 36 minutes per game. That seems to me to be a reasonable standard.

    I assume that the individual player game logs for playoff runs will reappear eventually?

    Yes.

    the new look is great, but I can’t wait for boxscores/game logs prior to 86-87, this is still the most important part of this website, more than the (very usefull !) tools you’re creating !

    I'm not sure when we might have data prior to 1986-87. I had a hard enough time putting the 1986-87 through 1990-91 seasons together.

    Only problem I’ve found is that the Franchise Indexes no longer tell us how far the team went in the Playoffs each year.

    Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned that. I'll try to get that back on there soon.

  8. JE Yaranon Says:

    best basketball archive website..

  9. Bubba Says:

    Hi, I liked how you fixed the ordering of teams based on which team has home court. However, you have the ordering backwards now. The home team is always supposed to come second, on the right side, or on the bottom half of a line score.

  10. Josh Says:

    love the new look. i used to use databasebasketball.com, but you guys are far superior to them now. keep it up

  11. Justin Kubatko Says:

    Hi, I liked how you fixed the ordering of teams based on which team has home court. However, you have the ordering backwards now. The home team is always supposed to come second, on the right side, or on the bottom half of a line score.

    Are you talking about thse pages?

    best basketball archive website..

    Thank you...

    love the new look. i used to use databasebasketball.com, but you guys are far superior to them now. keep it up

    ...and thank you too.

  12. Bubba Says:

    Yes, well, when I noticed the difference I was actually looking at some of the playoffs sections. Like the 1996 section, for instance, the Bulls of course had home court advantage in every series, and for their home games, they are listed first instead of second on the line. But it is this way with all games I have looked at; the home team is listed first when it should be second to be proper.

  13. Kal Rucker Says:

    Love it! Your site keeps getting better and better.

  14. Raejon Says:

    I think what the poster earlier was referring to in regards to the home/visitor placement was in regards to the box scores, where the home teams stats is supposed to be listed in the bottom half, etc.

  15. Sean Says:

    This is nitpicking, but I just wanted to know if the All-Star game MVP information is going to return. Other than that, I think the reboot is great.

  16. James Says:

    Hey, I'd like to say that I think that the stats you list for each Finals MVP should be that player's stats in the Finals series, not his stats during the regular season. I realize you can't do this for the older playoffs yet, but maybe you could at least change them to the players' playoff stats for that year, and for 1996 onwards they can be changed to his Finals averages. thanks.

  17. Justin Kubatko Says:

    This is nitpicking, but I just wanted to know if the All-Star game MVP information is going to return. Other than that, I think the reboot is great.

    All-Star Game MVP's are listed here. Or are you talking about listing them somewhere else?

    Hey, I’d like to say that I think that the stats you list for each Finals MVP should be that player’s stats in the Finals series, not his stats during the regular season.

    Can you please tell me what page(s) you are referring to?

  18. James Says:

    Oh, I'm sorry, I saw those stat lines on the old website format, and I guess they've been changed. They used to be posted on league summary pages next to the award winner. Thanks.

  19. Sean Says:

    "All-Star Game MVP’s are listed here. Or are you talking about listing them somewhere else?"

    Oh, okay. Yeah, I was thinking about under the "Awards" section for the players that have won one. But whatever. It's a minor detail.

  20. Nyeme Wilson Says:

    I miss the player comparison feature, and the season summary "Lost in WCF" Overall it's good though.

  21. David Says:

    I just want to thank you for some outstanding work on BBR. The new, clean look is so much easier to read, and I'm patiently looking forward to the return of other features such as the HoF monitors and career comparisons. I love the site and use it several times per week during the NBA season.

  22. Justin Kubatko Says:

    FYI, the replacement for the old stats search is up:

    Player Season Finder

  23. wstander Says:

    I thought this site was amazing when you first got started, and it just gets better and better. I can't remember now who tipped me to look up the link (it may possibly have been Kaufmann, the sports writer at Salon.com), but I am eternally grateful that I found you. For the price (free) to me as a user, it is flat out unbelievable. I decided to do my small part by sponsoring a page. I have always been reluctant to use PayPal, but I felt confident using the Amazon.com method and it worked fine.

  24. Justin Kubatko Says:

    I'm going to shut off comments on this post, as the spammers are starting to hit it hard. I appreciate all of the kind words and suggestions. If you have anything that you would like to add, please fill out the feedback form.