basketball-reference-scraper 1.0.0

A Python client for scraping stats and data from Basketball Reference

basketball_reference_scraper

Basketball Reference is a great resource to aggregate statistics on NBA teams, seasons, players, and games. This package provides methods to acquire data for all these categories in pre-parsed and simplified formats.

Installing

Via pip

I wrote this library as an exercise for creating my first PyPi package. Hopefully, you find it easy to use. Install using the following command:

pip install basketball-reference-scraper

If you're getting issues installing the dependencies listed in the install_requires or requirements.txt files. Try installing them manually via these commands:

python -m pip install pandas
python -m pip install bs4
python -m pip install lxml

This is caused by an ongoing issue with pip.

Via GitHub

Alternatively, you can just clone this repo and import the libraries at your own discretion. Note that this means you may have to install additional python packages including requests, asyncio, pandas, and pyppeteer.

Wait, don't scrapers like this already exist?

Yes, scrapers and APIs do exist. The primary API used currently is for stats.nba.com, but the website blocks too many requests, hindering those who want to acquire a lot of data. Additionally, scrapers for Basketball Reference do exist, but none of them load dynamically rendered content. These scrapers can only acquire statically loaded content, preventing those who want statistics in certain formats (for example, Player Advanced Stats Per Game).