license: apache-2.0
pretty_name: NBA Data Archive (1996-2026)
tags:
- basketball
- nba
- sports
- play-by-play
- shot-charts
size_categories:
- 10M<n<100M
NBA Data Archive
Parquet mirror of NBA play-by-play, shot detail, and player-matchup data from the 1996/97 season through 2025/26.
Built and maintained as the data layer for HoopsMatic.com analytics tools and HoopsHype editorial automation. Public so other researchers and tinkerers don't have to rebuild the same pipeline.
Layout
Two complementary layouts; pick whichever fits your query pattern.
per_season/
One Parquet file per (data type, season, season type). Use this when you only need a slice — a single season, a recent few years, regular season only, etc.
per_season/shotdetail/2024.parquet # 2024/25 regular season shots
per_season/shotdetail/po_2023.parquet # 2023/24 playoff shots
per_season/matchups/2017.parquet
...
merged/
One Parquet file per data type, all seasons + season types concatenated. Use this when you want to sweep the whole history at once (career-long shot charts, all-time leaderboards, multi-season trend analysis).
merged/shotdetail.parquet
merged/matchups.parquet
merged/nbastats.parquet
merged/nbastatsv3.parquet
merged/pbpstats.parquet
merged/datanba.parquet
merged/cdnnba.parquet
Every row in both layouts carries two provenance columns:
_season— int, e.g.2024for the 2024/25 season_season_type—"rg"(regular) or"po"(playoffs)
Data types
| Type | Coverage | Description |
|---|---|---|
shotdetail |
1996/97-2025/26 | Every shot with X/Y court coordinates, distance, make/miss, period, game context |
matchups |
2017/18-2025/26 | Player-vs-player matchup possessions and box-score lines |
nbastats |
1996/97-2024/25 | Classic play-by-play from stats.nba.com |
nbastatsv3 |
2020/21-2025/26 | Newer play-by-play schema |
pbpstats |
2000/01-2024/25 | Possession-level data with start-type tags |
datanba |
2016/17-2024/25 | Play-by-play with on-court action coordinates |
cdnnba |
2016/17-2025/26 | Lightweight play-by-play from cdn.nba.com |
Playoff coverage runs through 2024/25; 2025/26 playoffs don't exist yet.
Some sources (nbastats, pbpstats, datanba) don't yet have 2025/26
backfilled upstream.
Quick start
from datasets import load_dataset
# Load all shots from a single season
ds = load_dataset(
"cdechoch/nba-data-archive",
data_files="per_season/shotdetail/2024.parquet",
split="train",
)
# Or load the full career history of every shot ever
ds = load_dataset(
"cdechoch/nba-data-archive",
data_files="merged/shotdetail.parquet",
split="train",
)
Or skip the datasets library and read Parquet directly with pandas or
pyarrow — every file is standard, snappy-compressed Parquet.
Source and license
Underlying data collected and published by Vladislav Shufinskiy at shufinskiy/nba_data under the Apache License 2.0. This dataset is the same data converted to Parquet and redistributed under the same license.
Original upstream sources, in turn: stats.nba.com, data.nba.com,
cdn.nba.com, pbpstats.com.
Statistics themselves are not copyrightable (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 1991). Player names, team names, and game data are factual information used in a nominative reference capacity. No NBA trademarks, logos, or proprietary content are included.
Raw archives
The original .tar.xz files are mirrored at
jsierrahoopshype/nba-data-archive
on GitHub Releases, one release per data type, in case anyone prefers to
work from the CSVs.