colts18 wrote:fpliii wrote:Pretty good. Turns out that prior to Kennedy becoming commissioner, a lot of things were informal disorganized. A few years into his tenure (Pollack said 1968), a couple key changes were made:
• teams held onto box scores for both home and away games (beforehand, the only copy was held by home teams; he noted that teams didn't always hold onto the individual box scores, and it was common to say, only maintain records of each player's totals against certain opponents)
• all teams had to publish media guides
At some point later, but prior to 79-80 (since Pollack decided to keep track of four-point plays starting that year, he noted), teams began to maintain play-by-plays. It seems from speaking with him that not every team did at the time, though by the mid-80s they did (starting with 87-88 at which point he semi-retired as PR director and took on a less demanding position with the organization time-wise, he and his team went through the physical play-by-plays for the dunks numbers, and calculated plus/minus for the Sixers; they also calculated stats for some players like average FG distance, which were great mentions on broadcasts).
The takeaway being that the league play-by-play goes back at least 10 years prior to the first digitalized records, though likely not back to the beginning of the league. I asked him if he still had copies of the old play-by-plays, and he said he's not sure if they're still in storage, but he's not very confident that they're still around (though other teams might have their own; Pollack noted that he had to request play-by-plays for other teams directly from the league office before they were available online). So the data could still be out there somewhere, in some form, from 87-88 through 95-96.
How long did he keep track of 76ers plus minus data?
Didn't get an explicit year, but he implied it was the same year as when he started recording dunks (87-88 season). I'll try and ask again, though I may just order an older Sixers guide (since they're pretty cheap on eBay) just to see what it contains.
The guy was incredibly lucid for 92 years old and really knows his stuff, but it seems he's not 100% certain about all the specifics, since he's been around the league for so long.
