bref_player_bios: *Basketball-Reference Player Bios / Index*

In hoopR: Access Men's Basketball Play by Play Data

Basketball-Reference Player Bios / Index

Description

Get the Basketball-Reference player index for a starting letter, with bios, from Basketball-Reference.

Returns every player whose last name begins with letter, with career span, position, listed height/weight, birth date, college(s) and the player's Basketball-Reference id slug (the key used by bref_player_game_log() and the other player-level ⁠bref_*()⁠ functions). This doubles as a Basketball-Reference player dictionary. No API key is required. Basketball-Reference rate-limits aggressive scraping (~20 requests/minute) – space repeated calls with Sys.sleep().

Usage

bref_player_bios(letter = "a")

Arguments

letter

(character required): Single letter a-z (last-name initial). Defaults to "a".

Value

A hoopR_data tibble with one row per player:

col_name	types	description
player	character	Player name.
player_id	character	Basketball-Reference id slug (e.g. jamesle01).
year_min	integer	First season played.
year_max	integer	Last season played.
pos	character	Position(s).
height	character	Listed height (e.g. 6-9).
weight	integer	Listed weight (lbs).
birth_date	character	Birth date.
colleges	character	College(s).
letter	character	Last-name initial (echoes the letter argument).

See Also

Other Basketball-Reference Functions: bref_awards(), bref_draft(), bref_injuries(), bref_player_game_log(), bref_players_stats(), bref_standings(), bref_team_roster(), bref_teams_stats()

Examples

  try(bref_player_bios(letter = "a"))

hoopR documentation built on Aug. 25, 2026, 9:07 a.m.