With the NBA Finals ending last week, we now have a composite Finals stats page for 2013 here. You can access previous years' composite stats from the Finals (or any other series) by going to the yearly playoffs pages, mousing over the menu option marked "Series ?", and picking the playoff round in question.

On another related note, you can also access sortable stats from the Finals (single-game, single-season, or career) using the Player Game Finder, choosing "Game Type" = Playoffs, and picking the round you want.

Sponsoring a page is fun, fast, and easy way to support what we're doing here at Basketball-Reference. With a sponsorship, you can:

• Show your support for your favorite player or team.
• Drum up traffic for your own site & draw in fans with a common interest.
• Get some well-deserved recognition for your support of BBR.
• Make your voice heard by the tens of thousands of people who visit Basketball-Reference every day.

Here's all you have to do to get involved:

1. Create a membership account.
2. Find the page(s) you'd like to support, and click "sponsor" (available pages).
3. If the page you want is already sponsored, click "Alert Me!" to be informed when the current sponsorship expires.
4. Follow the instructions to create your message and make your payment.
5. Your message and links will be visible on the page after we approve them (usually in less than 24 hours).

And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these.

I have added pages with various regular season and postseason records for both individual players and teams to the leaders and records section. Links to these pages can be found on the main index of the leaders and records section. There is also a navigation bar at the top of each records page that will allow you to jump from one page to another. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about this latest addition.

The 2012 NBA Draft will take place on Thursday, June 28 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, so don't forget to check out our draft preview as well as previous drafts in our draft section.

Here's a video I made discussing all the semi-hidden things you can do on B-R player pages:

Sponsoring a page is fun, fast, and easy way to support what we're doing here at Baseball-Reference. With a sponsorship, you can:

• Show your support for your favorite player or team.
• Drum up traffic for your own site & draw in fans with a common interest.
• Get some well-deserved recognition for your support of B-R.
• Make your voice heard by the tens of thousands of people who visit Baseball-Reference every day.

Here's all you have to do to get involved:

1. Create a membership account.
2. Find the page(s) you'd like to support, and click "sponsor" (available pages).
3. If the page you want is already sponsored, click "Alert Me!" to be informed when the current sponsorship expires.
4. Follow the instructions to create your message and make your payment.
5. Your message and links will be visible on the page after we approve them (usually in less than 24 hours).

And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these (or podcasts like this).

The below article lamenting the loss of the fake to third, throw to first pitcher gambit caught my eye back in Feb, so I made a note to check back in June on whether it mattered. It looks like it has. Below are the SB_attempts per 1000 (this is SB+CS) when runners are on first and third. The numbers have actually gone up a bit this year and then SB_success rate which I computed as (SB + Def Indiff + Adv on Pickoff error)/(SB+CS+DefIndiff+Pickoffs + pickoff errors). Essentially advances over attempts to advance to put out the runner.

BBTF's Newsblog Discussion :: Morosi: Showalter balks at new pickoff rule.

| year_game | outs | count(*) | SB_att_per_1000 | SB_success_perc |
+-----------+------+----------+-----------------+-----------------+
|      2010 |    0 |     1004 |         30.8765 |              82 |
|      2011 |    0 |      941 |         41.4453 |              88 |
|      2012 |    0 |      950 |         43.1579 |              85 |
|      2013 |    0 |      429 |         51.2821 |              91 |


|      2010 |    1 |     2158 |         42.6321 |              77 |
|      2011 |    1 |     2241 |         52.6551 |              78 |
|      2012 |    1 |     2126 |         41.8627 |              73 |
|      2013 |    1 |      875 |         37.7143 |              76 |


|      2010 |    2 |     2991 |         65.8643 |              89 |
|      2011 |    2 |     2910 |         80.4124 |              87 |
|      2012 |    2 |     2950 |         83.0508 |              86 |
|      2013 |    2 |     1276 |         86.9906 |              93 |

Want to find a chain of teammates between any two players in MLB history, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-style? Then check out our Oracle of Baseball, which can help you find things like this:

Chain from Mickey Mantle to Mike Trout

I have added a Team Score Finder to the Basketball-Reference.com Play Index. With this new tool you can answer questions like:

• What is the record for most points scored in the fourth quarter?
• How many teams have been held scoreless in an overtime period?
• What is the record for largest deficit overcome after three quarters?
• How many teams have blown a halftime lead of 25 or more points?
• What is the record for most points scored in a regulation game?

If you have any questions or comments about the Team Score Finder, please leave them here or use our feedback system. Thanks and enjoy!

Today, we added a new feature to our popular Approximate Value metric on the site -- AV totals for kickers and punters. (Don't worry, we've warned Doug Drinen, and he hasn't suffered any adverse health side-effects that we know of.)

The methodology is described in tortuous detail on the AV formula page, but we basically looked at salary data to calibrate kicker and punter AV against our existing AV data, and used some simple metrics (kicking points added above average using distance data; punting gross yards per attempt w/ an adjustment for blocks) to measure kicking/punting performance. The best career AVs in each category are as follows:

We're still working out some AV kinks (particularly in terms of All-Pro bonuses) with certain players who played both kicker/punter and another position -- think Lou Groza -- but for the most part we're happy with the results, and we thought it was time special-teamers got their AV due.