Last week we added the USBWA MVP (and voting) to Basketball Reference. Today we are happy to announce that we have added some more award to Basketball Reference, allowing us to more fully flesh out our coverage of historical MVP and ROY awards. The most important and notable addition in this group is the Sam Davis Memorial Award, which was awarded by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association to the MVP each season from 1949-50 (the first NBA season after the merger of the BAA and NBL) through 1974-75. The NBA would merge with the ABA after the 1975-76 season, so this is a nearly full accounting of 'unofficial' MVPs from the original incarnation of the NBA. The MBWA also awarded an NBA Rookie of the Year, called the Hy Turkin Memorial Award. The organization also briefly had ABA counterparts for both of these awards: MBWA Outstanding ABA Player of the Year and MBWA Outstanding ABA Rookie. Read the rest of this entry

In modern times, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) is an organization for journalists covering college basketball. However, many decades ago writers covering the pro game were also part of the USBWA. The organization for journalists covering professional basketball is the Professional Basketball Writers Association (PBWA). But the PBWA wasn't formed until the 1970s. It has voted for many major NBA honors since 1980-81. Before this, however, the NBA MVP was determined by a player vote. Players could not vote for teammates and, thus, it was impossible to be a unanimous MVP. However, from 1958-59 through 1965-66, the USBWA pulled double duty and, in addition to voting for collegiate honors, handed out its own NBA MVP award, which was voted on by three scribes from each NBA city.

Basketball Reference is thrilled to announce that we have added this award (and full voting tallies!) to our database. This voting provides an interesting peek at what modern award voting methods would have rewarded in some vintage NBA seasons. Read the rest of this entry

Earlier in the week we added All-Rookie voting for the 2023-24 season to Basketball Reference on our Award Voting page and player pages. We also took this opportunity to flesh out most of the history of the voting for this honor thanks to the research efforts of NBA historian Todd Spehr. Read the rest of this entry

Most Valuable Player Awards in the National and American Leagues date back to 1911, when the Chalmers Award was voted on by a writer from each league city to reward the player in each league who "should prove himself as the most important and useful player to his club and to the league at large in point of deportment and value of services rendered." The reward for winning was an automobile. The award was created in 1910, but was for winning the batting title and ended in controversy. So from 1911-14 the award went to an MVP from each league. Interest in the award waned, and so from 1915-21 no MVPs were awarded. Read the rest of this entry

Basketball Reference has added awards voting data for many WNBA awards to its database. This information can be accessed via the pages for individual awards and clicking a link for full voting. For instance, our page of WNBA MVPs has a 'voting' column where you can see every player who received votes for various awards in that season. Here, for instance, are the 2022 WNBA awards votes. This information goes all the way back to the league's inaugural season in 1997. Read the rest of this entry

---UPDATED TO ACCOUNT FOR FULLER DATA SINCE 1990-91 ON 3/15/23---

While the NBA has only had a Defensive Player of the Year Award since 1982-83, it has named NBA All-Defensive teams since 1968-69. The All-Defensive teams allow fans to know which defenders were held in the highest regard, but don't necessarily tell us who was considered the best defender in a given season. Thanks to the research of Josh Elias and Sumitro Datta, we have added voting for the full history of the NBA All-Defensive teams, which allows us to get closer to answering that question.

Read the rest of this entry

Late last year Basketball Reference added NBA Coach of the Year voting back to 1995-96. Thanks to the research of Josh Elias and Robert Bradley, we have now added voting for the award all the way back to the 1962-63 season, which was the first year of the award. Read the rest of this entry

Basketball Reference has added NBA Coach of the Year voting back to 1995-96 thanks to work of Noureddine Hourani, a researcher who passed this information along to us.

This new information can be found on coach pages such as Phil Jackson and Monty Williams. Additionally, if you visit our page with the full history of the NBA Coach of the Year Award, you will see a 'v' link in the rows for years where we have voting. Those links will lead to a page with voting summaries for all of the awards for which we have data for that season. For instance, here's the 1995-96 NBA Award voting summary.

Read the rest of this entry

Thanks to the research of John Turney, we have made a big addition in our coverage of historical awards given to the NFL's top players. With this addition, more context can be given to which players were considered the best in various categories. Here follows a list of the latest additions we have made:

• Associated Press (AP) NFL Comeback Player of the Year vote breakdowns (1963-1966, 1998-present)
• United Press International (UPI) NFL Most Valuable Player vote breakdowns (1951-1969)
• UPI AFL Player of the Year vote breakdowns (1960-1969)
• UPI NFL Rookie of the Year winners (1954-1969 NFL, 1970-1996 NFC/AFC) and vote breakdowns (1954-1969)
• UPI AFL Rookie of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1960-1969)
• AP AFL Rookie of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1961-1966)
• AP AFL Offensive Rookie of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1967-1969)
• AP AFL Defensive Rookie of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1967-1969)
• AP AFL Coach of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1961-1969)
• UPI AFL Coach of the Year winners and vote breakdowns (1960-1969)
• AP Assistant Coach of the Year (2014-present)
• NFLPA Alan Page Community Award (formerly known as the Whizzer White Man of the Year) (1966-present)
• AAFC Most Valuable Player (1946-1948)
• Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) Offensive Player of the Year (1992-present)
• PFWA Defensive Player of the Year (1992-present)
• PFWA Most Improved Player (2000-present)
• PFWA Rookie of the Year (1966, 1975-1991, 2013-present)
• PFWA Offensive Rookie of the Year (1992-present)
• PFWA Defensive Rookie of the Year (1992-present)
• PFWA Coach of the Year (1966-present)
• PFWA Assistant Coach of the Year (1993-present)
• PFWA Executive of the Year (1993-present)
• Sporting News (SN) Player of the Year (1954-2008)
• SN Offensive Player of the Year (2008-present)
• SN Defensive Player of the Year (2008-present)
• SN Rookie of the Year (1955-present)
• SN Coach of the Year (1947-present)
• UPI NFL Coach of the Year (1953-1969 NFL, 1970-1996 NFC/AFC)
• UPI Offensive Player of the Year (1983-1996 NFC/AFC)
• UPI Defensive Player of the Year (1975-1996 NFC/AFC)
• Pro Football Weekly's Player of the Week (1976-2012)

Again, a big thanks to John Turney for collecting and providing this data. Turney's name may be familiar as we have also credited him in our addition of AP award voting breakdown data as well as pre-1982 sacks. If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to contact us directly via our feedback form.

One important piece to interpreting a sport's history is looking at who the media of the time selected as the top players to award, but you can also get some important context by looking at the other players who were in serious consideration for those awards. With that in mind, we're happy to announce the addition of voting breakdown data for the Associated Press' Most Valuable Player, Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year and Coach of the Year awards. You can find this information in the Football Award Voting Summaries section of our Awards index. Just taking a random example of 1982, you can see Mark Moseley's narrow win over Dan Fouts in the MVP race, as well as Marcus Allen's unanimous OROY win and the runners-up to Lawrence Taylor in the DPOY race.

Having this data also allows us to calculate career Award Shares. For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is the sum of the percentage of maximum votes they received over the course of their career. For example, a unanimous MVP like Lamar Jackson in 2019 gets 1.0 Award Share for that award, while 2016 Matt Ryan got 25 out of the possible 50 votes, so that's 0.5 Award Shares for that win. We have links to the career MVP, OPOY and DPOY award shares leaderboards on our Leaders index. Award shares and rank for each season they received votes will also be available in the Awards and Honors table on player pages, so you can more quickly see that in addition to Aaron Donald's 3 DPOY awards so far, he's also received at least a vote in every DPOY ballot since his sophomore season.

Some coverage notes:

• MVP voting breakdowns available since 1957. 100% complete back to 1986. 1961 and 1975 MVP vote totals still missing. AP did not give out awards in 1960.
• OPOY voting breakdowns available since 1972. 100% complete back to 1986. 1975 and 1985 OPOY vote totals still missing.
• DPOY voting breakdowns available since 1971. 100% complete back to 1988. 1985 DPOY vote totals still missing.

We want to give a big thanks to John Turney who compiled this historical voting data. Turney was also a contributor on the pre-1982 sacks data we announced recently.

If you have any questions, suggestions or even a lead on some of the still-waiting-to-be-discovered vote totals, feel free to contact us via our feedback form.