Editorial Policy
Courtside News publishes reference data rather than news reporting. This page sets out where that data comes from, how it is compiled and checked, how often it changes, and what we will not publish.
What we publish
The site consists of structured records: draft results by year and by franchise, future draft pick ownership including protections and swap rights, team salary cap sheets, luxury tax positions, and player contract terms. Written summaries on those pages are restatements of the same stored figures, generated from the records themselves, so the prose cannot drift away from the table beneath it.
We do not run a breaking-news feed and we do not republish, summarise or rewrite other outlets' reporting. In August 2026 we retired an earlier archive that did exactly that, because it duplicated work being done better elsewhere.
Sourcing
- Salary, cap, tax and contract figures are sourced from Spotrac and refreshed on a daily cycle. Cap and tax numbers for a season in progress are projections and are labelled as such where they appear.
- Draft results are compiled from published league records covering every draft class. Each pick carries the drafting franchise as it was named at the time, which is why historical entries show former franchise names.
- Future pick ownership, including protection ranges and swap conditions, is recorded as published rather than paraphrased, because the exact wording determines which club ultimately receives a selection.
How the data is maintained
Data is collected by automated pipelines that write into a single database, and the site reads from that database at request time. There is no manual re-keying between the source and the page, which removes a common class of transcription error but makes us dependent on the upstream source being right.
Where a figure is missing or a source is unreachable, the affected page shows nothing rather than an estimate. We would rather leave a gap than publish a number we cannot stand behind.
Use of automated tools
Automation is used to collect the data, to keep it current, and to generate the descriptive summaries that sit alongside the tables. Those summaries are produced from the stored values by fixed rules, not written freehand, so they state only what the data states. Responsibility for what appears on the site rests with its owner, not with any tool used to build it.
Accuracy and corrections
If a figure here is wrong, we want to know. Substantive corrections are logged on the Corrections page with the date and what changed. Because the underlying data refreshes daily, a value that looks wrong today may simply be a source update rather than an error, and the corrections log distinguishes between the two.
What we will not publish
- Betting odds, tips, affiliate promotions or prediction-market content of any kind.
- Unsourced rumours presented as established fact.
- Scraped or reworded articles from other publishers.
- Speculation about the private lives, health or legal affairs of players and staff.
Independence
Courtside News is independently operated and is not affiliated with the NBA or any of its teams. Team names, logos and related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. No club, agency or third party has any say in what appears on the site.
Images
Images are credited to their source or photographer where that information is available. Rights holders with a concern about any image can reach us through the Contact page and we will respond promptly.