hoopR
hoopR is an R package for working with men’s basketball data.
The package has functions to access live play by play and box score data from ESPN with shot locations when available. As of version 1.3.0, hoopR is also a full NBA Stats API wrapper with 127 functions added in this release.
It is additionally a scraping and aggregating interface for Ken Pomeroy’s men’s college basketball statistics website, kenpom.com. It provides users with an active subscription the capability to scrape the website tables and analyze the data for themselves.
As of version 3.1.0, the package exports 600+ functions spanning the NBA Stats API (nba_*), ESPN (espn_nba_* / espn_mbb_*), KenPom (kp_*), CollegeBasketballData (cbbd_*), Basketball-Reference (bref_*), Bart Torvik (torvik_*), RealGM (realgm_*), Fox Sports (fox_*), NCAA (ncaa_mbb_*), and NBA G-League (nbagl_*), plus load_nba_*() / load_mbb_*() / load_ncaa_mbb_*() bulk-data loaders backed by the sportsdataverse-data release repos.
Data status
The load_*() functions read release assets on sportsdataverse-data. The badges below are rebuilt nightly from each producer’s latest workflow run and newest release files; idle means the sport is out of season. Full detail: sportsdataverse.org/status.
| Dataset | Data updated | Through | Pipeline | Update workflows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s college basketball (ESPN) |  |
 |
 |
 
|
| Men’s college basketball (stats.ncaa.org) |  |
 |
 |
 |
| NBA (ESPN) |  |
 |
 |
 |
| NBA Stats API |  |
 |
 |
  
|
| Conference, division and ballpark reference |  |
 |
 |
— |
Installation
You can install the CRAN version of hoopR with:
install.packages("hoopR")You can install the released version of hoopR from GitHub with:
# You can install using the pak package using the following code:
if (!requireNamespace('pak', quietly = TRUE)){
install.packages('pak')
}
pak::pak("sportsdataverse/hoopR")Quick Start
NBA full play-by-play seasons (2002-2026) ~ 1-2 minutes
tictoc::tic()
progressr::with_progress({
nba_pbp <- hoopR::load_nba_pbp()
})
tictoc::toc()Men’s college basketball full play-by-play seasons (2006-2026) ~ 2-3 minutes
tictoc::tic()
progressr::with_progress({
mbb_pbp <- hoopR::load_mbb_pbp()
})
tictoc::toc()Documentation
For more information on the package and function reference, please see the hoopR documentation website.
There is also a printable hoopR cheat sheet (PDF), one of a set covering every SportsDataverse package.
Our Contributors (they’re awesome)
Jason Lee (@theFirmAISports)
Billy Fryer (@BillyFryer42)
Ross Drucker (@rossdrucker9)
Vladislav Shufinskiy (@vshufinskiy)
Cheat sheet
A printable one-page reference for hoopR — the function families, the loaders, and what each one returns.
📄 Download the hoopR cheat sheet (PDF)
Free to download, print and hand out; light and dark, US Letter landscape. Every SportsDataverse package has one — browse them all at sportsdataverse.org/cheatsheets.