Sports Reference Blog

Games Started have been officially tracked as an NBA statistic since 1970-71, but comprehensive season-level data on games started is only currently in the public realm back to 1981-82. Thanks to old media guides we have been able to flesh out this coverage for some players and teams (most notably the 76ers due to the legendary efforts of Harvey Pollack). Basketball Reference is happy to announce that we have added regular season starts for the Knicks back to the 1964-65 season. So, for instance, we are now able to present that Willis Reed started 613 of his 650 Knicks games and that Walt Frazier started 666 of his 759 games with the franchise. It is also interesting to note the pattern of the number of starts for Bill Bradley and Cazzie Russell during the Knicks glory years of the late 60s and early 70s. This information is thankfully printed in the Knicks media guide and we should be able to add playoff starts for the franchise back to 1954, as well. Though starts have only been 'officially' tracked since 1970-71, obviously it was something that teams could reliably compile for earlier years, as the Knicks have done. Additionally, we have recently found games started for the Chicago Bulls back to 1970-71, so we hope to soon have an extra decade of starts coverage for the Bulls.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 9th, 2024 at 11:53 am and is filed under Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.