Site Philosophy

When I approached Sean Forman in 2003 about creating a basketball site similar to Baseball-Reference.com, he was very receptive to the idea. As I began the process of creating the site, I tried to keep the following things in mind:

• The data should be as comprehensive as possible. My first thought was to only include data for active players, but that information can be found anywhere. If the site is going to be unique, it should contain as much data as posible.
• The site should be well-organized. Have you ever visited a web site hoping to find what you thought was a simple piece of information and wasted a lot of time trying to locate it? I hope that never happens to you here.
• The site should be fast. Most of the pages are static, so you don't have to wait for information to be pulled from a database before viewing a page.
• Links, links, links. Visiting Magic Johnson's page may lead to a question about the 1979-80 NBA season, or a question about the 1987-88 Los Angeles Lakers, or a question about his NBA coaching record. All it takes is one click to (hopefully) find an answer to your question.
• The HTML and CSS used to create the site should adhere to the standards set forth by the W3C. Have you ever visited a page that doesn't render properly in your browser? The most likely reason for this is invalid code. I find it especially irritating when a page only renders properly when viewed in Internet Explorer. My browser of choice is Google Chrome. It's completely free, so give it a try if you haven't done so already.
• The site should be fun. I had a good time putting this site together (yes, I like writing code) and I hope you have a good time when you visit. If you come here looking for game-by-game results of the 1985-86 Boston Celtics, there is a high probability you will end up on a page that has nothing to do with your original query.

This piece was originally written on May 9, 2004 by Justin Kubatko. It was updated on December 20, 2007 by Justin Kubatko.