How to explode a list inside a Dataframe cell into separate rows

In the code below, I first reset the index to make the row iteration easier.

I create a list of lists where each element of the outer list is a row of the target DataFrame and each element of the inner list is one of the columns. This nested list will ultimately be concatenated to create the desired DataFrame.

I use a lambda function together with list iteration to create a row for each element of the nearest_neighbors paired with the relevant name and opponent.

Finally, I create a new DataFrame from this list (using the original column names and setting the index back to name and opponent).

df = (pd.DataFrame({'name': ['A.J. Price'] * 3, 
                    'opponent': ['76ers', 'blazers', 'bobcats'], 
                    'nearest_neighbors': [['Zach LaVine', 'Jeremy Lin', 'Nate Robinson', 'Isaia']] * 3})
      .set_index(['name', 'opponent']))

>>> df
                                                    nearest_neighbors
name       opponent                                                  
A.J. Price 76ers     [Zach LaVine, Jeremy Lin, Nate Robinson, Isaia]
           blazers   [Zach LaVine, Jeremy Lin, Nate Robinson, Isaia]
           bobcats   [Zach LaVine, Jeremy Lin, Nate Robinson, Isaia]

df.reset_index(inplace=True)
rows = []
_ = df.apply(lambda row: [rows.append([row['name'], row['opponent'], nn]) 
                         for nn in row.nearest_neighbors], axis=1)
df_new = pd.DataFrame(rows, columns=df.columns).set_index(['name', 'opponent'])

>>> df_new
                    nearest_neighbors
name       opponent                  
A.J. Price 76ers          Zach LaVine
           76ers           Jeremy Lin
           76ers        Nate Robinson
           76ers                Isaia
           blazers        Zach LaVine
           blazers         Jeremy Lin
           blazers      Nate Robinson
           blazers              Isaia
           bobcats        Zach LaVine
           bobcats         Jeremy Lin
           bobcats      Nate Robinson
           bobcats              Isaia

EDIT JUNE 2017

An alternative method is as follows:

>>> (pd.melt(df.nearest_neighbors.apply(pd.Series).reset_index(), 
             id_vars=['name', 'opponent'],
             value_name='nearest_neighbors')
     .set_index(['name', 'opponent'])
     .drop('variable', axis=1)
     .dropna()
     .sort_index()
     )

Exploding a list-like column has been simplified significantly in pandas 0.25 with the addition of the explode() method:

df = (pd.DataFrame({'name': ['A.J. Price'] * 3, 
                    'opponent': ['76ers', 'blazers', 'bobcats'], 
                    'nearest_neighbors': [['Zach LaVine', 'Jeremy Lin', 'Nate Robinson', 'Isaia']] * 3})
      .set_index(['name', 'opponent']))

df.explode('nearest_neighbors')

Out:

                    nearest_neighbors
name       opponent                  
A.J. Price 76ers          Zach LaVine
           76ers           Jeremy Lin
           76ers        Nate Robinson
           76ers                Isaia
           blazers        Zach LaVine
           blazers         Jeremy Lin
           blazers      Nate Robinson
           blazers              Isaia
           bobcats        Zach LaVine
           bobcats         Jeremy Lin
           bobcats      Nate Robinson
           bobcats              Isaia