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History

When I began researching Rising Above the Rim several years ago, I was struck by the lack of an online repository for NBA box scores. David Smith and his fellow volunteers had built Retrosheet.org into an extremely valuable research tool for Major League Baseball box scores and play-by-play accounts, and I had naively assumed that a basketball equivalent existed. However, there was little available beyond some limited efforts on scattered web sites, such as Basketball-Reference.com. So, to collect the box scores I needed for Rising Above the Rim, I turned to the microfilm machines at the Boston Public Library, along with some additional sources such as Bill Woten's excellent Game 7. I figured it would take months to assemble a more complete collection, based on the demands of my real job.

Then, in the spring of 2010, my local library announced they had obtained access to an online archive of Boston Globe articles for the years prior to 1980. I realized immediately that these .pdf's would include box scores, so I stopped work on another project I was pursuing and began downloading Celtics articles from the "Bill Russell era" - 1956 through 1969.

But there were some problems. Many box scores were missing, especially late night games on the West Coast, and the quality of the ones that were available varied - most were basic versions that contained only FGM, FTM, FTA, PF, and PTS, while others were complete with REB, AST, etc. There were also plenty of typographical errors and blurred images. I began to contact a few folks looking for additional sources, privately dreading the prospect of having to spend hours digging through other Boston newspapers on microfilm before being able to post an initial version.