Sports Reference Blog

We are thrilled to announce that we have drastically expanded our coverage of WNBA Play-by-Play, as well as statistics derived from Play-by-Play, at Basketball Reference. Previously, our Play-by-Play went back to 2016. and our PxP-derived statistics went back to 2018. However, now we have coverage for over 99.7% of games in WNBA history. We're currently missing just 17 games (regular-season and postseason) in the history of the league and are confident we can source most of the missing material over time. The coverage is 100% complete back through 2016 and no season is missing more than 3 games (2006, 2000 and 1998). Read the rest of this entry

We're excited to announce that we've added recognition for Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award winners to their top-of-page awards section.

This section, that we call "bling" internally, recognizes major awards received by the player so that users can see the scope of a player's accomplishments at a glance, right at the top of the page. Let us know what other awards you'd like to see in a player's bling section!

A quick update! We've added a fun new feature to three of the most popular pages on Basketball Reference. Now, the pages for Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan will display all of the jerseys those three players wore in their careers, from high school to (if applicable) college to the Olympics. That's in addition to, of course, the pro jerseys we already display for every player in our database.

Enjoy and tell us who else you'd like to see this feature added for.

As we’ve reached the beginning of September, our 2024 Sports Reference Internship program comes to a close. We had a wonderful, talented cohort this year that has worked on a variety of projects across our sites. As they begin their new academic year, we’d like to share what our interns have worked on this summer, as well as where they’re heading in the fall.

Anzhuo Wang, Engineering Intern, attends Northeastern University and is majoring in Computer Science. She roots for the Penguins and Pirates, having lived in Pittsburgh growing up, and cheers on the Huskies as a member of the Northeastern Pep Band.

In the fall, Anzhuo will be completing a Software Engineering Co-op at Philips. Anzhuo’s favorite project was creating landing pages for Baseball Reference’s non-major league stats and scoring log breakdowns for Hockey Reference!

Arjun Ramprasad, Product Intern, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Computer Science. He roots for Borussia Dortmund (BVB), the Lakers, and the Mavericks.

Arjun will return to university this fall. His favorite project was developing a proof of concept (POC) for a natural language query (NLQ) tool that would simplify search on Stathead, and testing it with users.

Clare O’Dwyer, Engineering Intern, is studying Computer Science at the University of Virginia and is from Wilmington, Delaware. Clare proudly roots for NJ/ NY Gotham FC, the Yankees, and follows distance running and rugby. 

Clare is looking forward to returning to school in Charlottesville this fall, and enjoyed creating front pages for our register baseball leagues in collaboration with Anzhuo!

Liam Smith, Data Intern, is a rising junior at the University of Alabama studying Mathematics, Management Information Systems, and Sport Management. He roots for the Crimson Tide, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Stillman College, and Pittsburgh's professional teams, despite being a North Carolina native.

Liam will return to Tuscaloosa this fall to continue his research on building predictive models for college softball and begin a new role in the Department of Information Systems, Statistics, and Management Science. His favorite project was researching the transaction histories of each MLB player that debuted this summer.

Lindsey Komson, Marketing Intern, is a graduate student at Quinnipiac University studying Interactive Media & Communications. She just graduated from QU with undergraduate degrees in Media Studies and Graphic & Interactive Design. Lindsey is from Long Island, loves baseball, and is a die-hard Mets fan. She also roots for the Knicks, Islanders, and Quinnipiac Bobcats.

This fall, Lindsey will be continuing her graduate degree online through Quinnipiac University. Her favorite project this summer was pitching and drafting the internship program landing page on our site!

Maddy Brown, Data Intern, is a lifelong Seattleite and a math PhD student at the University of Washington. She is a big fan of the Seattle Storm and UW Women’s Basketball, which she makes content about on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter as @wnbadata.

This fall, she continues her graduate studies at UW and will be seeking opportunities in data analytics with professional sports teams. Her favorite project this summer was researching WNBA players’ gap years, as well as getting to test new women’s college basketball data!

Matt Severino, Marketing Intern, is currently a master’s student at DePaul University studying Communication and Media. He grew up in the Chicago suburbs and has been a die-hard Bulls fan for as long as he can remember. Other than basketball, Matt is a massive golf fan, and his favorite golfer is Tommy Fleetwood.

This fall, Matt plans to finish up his degree at DePaul University, hopefully presenting his final projects at a couple academic conferences and attending several Bulls games along the way! His favorite project was crafting an email drip campaign for the beginning of the 2024-25 NBA season.

Exciting news! We've updated the sections of Baseball Reference devoted to leagues beyond the majors! In case you didn't know, we have extensive coverage (both historic and current) of many leagues from around the world, including Japan's NPB and Korea's KBO, as well as non-major league American baseball institutions like college and the minors.

This update makes the home pages for these leagues look similar to the Baseball Reference front page. For instance, here's what our NPB section looks like now. Read the rest of this entry

In one of the largest engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company, we’ve invested a significant amount of time developing a standard method for building and launching data tables across all of the Reference sites. The vast majority of the data across all seven Reference sites is presented in these tables, so this is a massive project that touches nearly every page you visit.

The updated tables are rolling out one-by-one in a process that will take several months. We anticipate the pace of table updates to begin slowly, but then accelerate as our process and framework progress.

Once a table has been updated, you will see an “Upgraded” link next to its title that directs you to this blog post.

Table Title ✨ Upgraded ✨

While this project is mostly focused on infrastructure, the standardization process will lead to several new features on many tables. This blog post will update as we publish tables, showing the new features available on each. We anticipate the first few tables to roll out slowly, but once the process is established the pace will pick up considerably.

For example, the first table we updated was the Player Standard Batting table on Baseball Reference League Register pages. This table alone added several new features not previously available on this table:

• Playoffs Tab: For the first time, we’re showing player season-level postseason statistics on Baseball Reference. This tab will also be coming to player and team pages. You will continue to see series-level postseason statistics for players and teams.
• New Stats: We’ve added three stats to our set of Standard Batting stats—WAR (Wins Above Replacement), Rbat+ (our version of wRC+), and rOBA (our version of wOBA). When we update player and team tables, these stats will also appear there.
• Black Ink: When looking at statistics for all players in a league, you can see at a glance who led the league in a variety of categories. We show Black Ink (bolding) for all stats with a leaderboard.
• Awards Column: The Awards column that you see on player pages is now coming to league and team pages. So far, we’ve added to the league page, so you can see at a glance which players were named All-Stars, won Gold Gloves, won MVP, etc. On the Playoffs tab, postseason awards are included (World Series MVP and LCS MVP).

As more tables are launched, we plan to use this blog post to share screencasts detailing the new table feature set. If you see anything that doesn’t look right, please let us know through our Feedback form.

Thanks to the efforts of the Chadwick Baseball Bureau, Baseball Reference is happy to announce that we have extended our coverage of NCAA Division II & III baseball all the way back to 2011. Previously our coverage of D-II went back to 2013 and our D-III coverage went back to 2016.

All of the non-majors content on Baseball Reference is available via our Register section, where you will find information on countless leagues. Among the D-III stars we now have stats for is Tim Locastro. He hit .436 with 40 stolen bases (in 41 attempts) across 48 games in 2013. Among the notable D-II names we have added statistics for is Joey Wendle. Wendle hit .399 for West Chester in in leading the Golden Rams to the 2012 National Championship.

Please keep your eyes peeled for further enhancements, including extensions of our historical coverage of NAIA and collegiate summer leagues.

Sports Reference has added three software engineers to our team this summer.

Marshall Nielsen, Software Engineer, joined Sports Reference in the middle of 2024. He grew up in Lexington, Kentucky (home to the greatest tradition in the history of college basketball). In addition to the University of Kentucky Wildcats, he is also a Reds and Bengals fan.

Ryan Crenny, Software Engineer, joined Sports Reference in the middle of 2024. He grew up outside Philadelphia and attended Villanova University. Ryan is a big Eagles and Phillies fan as well as an avid Sixers process defender. He currently lives in Madison Wisconsin and enjoys playing golf and disc golf in his free time.

Brett Peavler, Senior Software Engineer, joined Sports Reference in July of 2024. Brett is originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin but a previous job at Microsoft brought him to Seattle where he lives today. He roots for the Brewers, Packers, Bucks, Kraken, and Mariners.

Please join us in welcoming Marshall, Ryan, and Brett to the team!

We know that Elgin Baylor had 26 triple-doubles in his regular-season NBA career. However, for many years we have only known the particulars around 25 of the 26. We knew we were missing details on one in the 1962-63 season, but we weren't certain which one. We are happy to announce that we have discovered that this 'missing' triple-double occurred on March 1, 1963 in a game at the Chicago Coliseum against the Chicago Zephyrs (now known as the Washington Wizards). Baylor finished the game with 33 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists. With the addition of this data, we now have the details on 3,450 of the 3,475 known triple-doubles in NBA history. Of the 25 triple-doubles we are missing details on, 14 of them belong to Bob Cousy. We know Cousy had 33 triple-doubles, but we have details on just 19 of them. If you have access to official scorer's reports for older NBA games, please let us know!

The official scorer's report for this game is attached below.

Below is the list of known triple-doubles for which we are missing details:

BOB COUSY MISSING TRIPLE-DOUBLES
1950-51 2
1951-52 1
1952-53 5
1953-54 1 (PROBABLY 11/1/53)
1955-56 4
1957-58 1

JOHN HAVLICEK MISSING TRIPLE-DOUBLES
1967-68 1

BILL RUSSELL MISSING TRIPLE-DOUBLES
1962-63 1

JERRY LUCAS MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLES
1968-69 1

DAVE DeBUSSCHERE MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLES
1965-66 1 (PROBABLY 12-14-65)

GENE SHUE MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLES
UNKNOWN (57-62) 2 (BOTH WITH PISTONS)

RED KERR MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLES
1965-66 1 (PROBABLY 12/14/65)

DICK McGUIRE MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLES
UNKNOWN (58-60) 1 (WITH PISTONS)

MEL HUTCHINS MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLE
1955-56 1 (PROBABLY 12/10/55)

MAURICE STOKES MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLE
1957-58 1

FRED SCHAUS MISSING TRIPLE DOUBLE
1951-52 1 (PROBABLY 3/16/52)

Thanks to the efforts of our data intern Maddy Brown and our engineering intern Clare O'Dwyer, Basketball Reference has compiled and added descriptions for gap years for WNBA players. Similar to what we display for NBA players, these show career interruptions where a player misses a whole season due to injury, retirement or other circumstances. Some good examples are Sue Bird (who missed 2013 and 2019),  Sheryl Swoopes (2001, 2009, 2010), Elena Delle Donne (2020) and Lisa Leslie (2007).

We hope you enjoy these additions.