All-NBA Vote Shares
Understanding All-NBA Voting Data on Basketball Reference
Basketball Reference includes historical All-NBA voting data on player and award pages, but the completeness of that data varies depending on the season. Here's a quick guide to what's available and how far back each data type goes.
What's available and how far back
- Full voting data (including players receiving votes outside the named teams): available from 1985–86 onward
- Votes broken down by 1st and 2nd team: available from 1983–84 onward
- 3rd team voting breakdown: available from 1988–89 onward, when the 3rd team was first introduced
- Full voting data for 1st and 2nd team members: available from 1965–66 onward, with some gaps. Partial data is missing for the 1969–70, 1974–75, and 1978–79 seasons
- Leading vote-getter: available from 1949–50 onward
- Number of voters: available from 1978–79 onward
- Maximum possible votes (used to calculate vote share): available from 1961–62 onward, with the exception of 1976–77 and 1977–78
Why Vote Share Can't Be Calculated for Some Seasons
Vote share requires knowing both the votes a player received and the maximum number of votes possible in that season. Where either piece of information is missing, vote share cannot be calculated. This affects a handful of seasons where voter counts or total possible votes were not recorded or have not yet been recovered. Additional historical voting data will be added to the site over time as it becomes available.
Where to Find This Data
You can view the full voting breakdown for any season on its awards page. Note that some seasons will reflect the data gaps described above. The 1978–79 season is a useful example of a year where the data is only partially available and can be viewed at: https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/awards_1979.html