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().
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
# \donttest{
try(bref_player_bios(letter = "a"))
#> ── Player bios from basketball-reference.com ──────────────────── hoopR 3.1.0 ──
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-06-13 07:17:28 UTC
#> # A tibble: 179 × 10
#> player player_id year_min year_max pos height weight birth_date colleges
#> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 Alaa Abd… abdelal01 1991 1995 F-C 6-10 240 June 24, … "Duke"
#> 2 Zaid Abd… abdulza01 1969 1978 C-F 6-9 235 April 7, … "Iowa S…
#> 3 Kareem A… abdulka01 1970 1989 C 7-2 225 April 16,… "UCLA"
#> 4 Mahmoud … abdulma02 1991 2001 G 6-1 162 March 9, … "LSU"
#> 5 Tariq Ab… abdulta01 1998 2003 F 6-6 223 November … "Michig…
#> 6 Shareef … abdursh01 1997 2008 F 6-9 225 December … "Califo…
#> 7 Tom Aber… abernto01 1977 1981 F 6-7 220 May 6, 19… "Indian…
#> 8 Forest A… ablefo01 1957 1957 G 6-3 180 July 27, … "Wester…
#> 9 John Abr… abramjo01 1947 1948 F 6-3 195 February … "Salem …
#> 10 Álex Abr… abrinal01 2017 2019 G-F 6-6 200 August 1,… ""
#> # ℹ 169 more rows
#> # ℹ 1 more variable: letter <chr>
# }