Box Score Data

Box score data is a structured summary of the results from a sports competition. The box score lists the game score as well as individual and team achievements in the game.

For the NBA, the 1986-87 season is the earliest season available with complete box score stats.

Need Box Score Datasets in Excel?
Access to historical basketball box score stats for NBA, NCAAB and WNBA that are downloadable in Excel spreadsheet.

In basketball, we need to account for intangible things such as setting the pick, making the right pass, positioning in the corner to spread the floor, clearing space by moving down the lane and etc. These kinds of data are not available in the box scores, that’s why it’s often been misleading. Metrics derived from play-by-play (PBP) data, not 100% perfect though, might help more than box score stats.

History of NBA data Chart courtesy of the great Backpicks.
Before the video-tracking era, analytics departments of teams were crunching numbers with tools such as StatsCube, Synergy.

Visitors Interested in Box Score Data Also Viewed
Play-by-Play Logs
Learn more about having a powerful dataset of NBA play-by-play logs which include shot distance & x,y coordinates.
SportVu Data
Learn more about the player tracking technology that collects spatial data of the ball, players and referees.
NBA Plus-Minus
Plus-Minus keeps track of the net score changes when a player is on or off. Find out more about other plus-minus derivatives.

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