John Hollinger (born May 17, 1971) is the former Vice President of Basketball Operations for the
Memphis Grizzlies
The Memphis Grizzlies (referred to locally as the Grizz) are an American professional basketball team based in Memphis, Tennessee. The Grizzlies compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference ...
of the
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...
(NBA) and current Senior NBA columnist at
The Athletic
''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...
.
Prior to December 2012, he was an analyst and writer for
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
, primarily covering the NBA. Hollinger grew up in
Mahwah, New Jersey
Mahwah is the northernmost and largest municipality by geographic area () in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population of the township was 25,487, a decline of 403 from the 25,890 counted in the ...
, and is a 1993 graduate of the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
.
Hollinger developed the website ''Alleyoop'' in 1996, initially as a hobby and sounding board for his musings on the game. Touting the site as "The Basketball Page for Thinking Fans," Hollinger followed in the footsteps of noted analysts
Dean Oliver and
Bob Bellotti in a quest for the ultimate basketball statistic.
During ''Alleyoops early years, Hollinger experimented with offensive and defensive ratings (points created and allowed per 100 possessions) in much the same way as Oliver, as a means of quantifying a player's overall contribution to his team. While the methods were hardly groundbreaking, Hollinger's writing style and incisive commentary caught the eye of such industry luminaries as ''Web'' Magazine, and ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''.
Hollinger spent the next three years as the sports editor at
OregonLive.com, developing an intimate understanding of the inner workings of the
NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
, both as a game and a business. It was during his OregonLive years that Hollinger developed his
Player Efficiency Rating
The player efficiency rating (PER) is John Hollinger's all-in-one basketball rating, which attempts to collect or boil down all of a player's contributions into one number. Using a detailed formula, Hollinger developed a system that rates every p ...
(PER), a figure that attempts to combine all of a player's contributions into one number.
After his stint in Portland, Hollinger was hired as the basketball editor at ''
SI.com
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice ...
'', ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
s online sister site. In 2002, Hollinger released the first ''Pro Basketball Prospectus'' which was his first work published in print.
Hollinger has authored three more ''Prospectuses'', now called ''Pro Basketball Forecasts''. He left ''Sports Illustrated'' to write for
ESPN.com
ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of ESPN Inc.
History
Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including ...
in the summer of 2005, and his weekly columns were available through their "insider" subscription service. Additionally, Hollinger wrote for the ''
New York Sun
''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...
s sports section.
Hollinger has appeared every year on the
basketball analytics panel at the annual
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC) is an annual event that provides a forum for industry professionals (executives and leading researchers) and students to discuss the increasing role of analytics in the sports industry. The conferen ...
.
Hollinger game score
As an extension of the
Player Efficiency Rating
The player efficiency rating (PER) is John Hollinger's all-in-one basketball rating, which attempts to collect or boil down all of a player's contributions into one number. Using a detailed formula, Hollinger developed a system that rates every p ...
, Hollinger also developed a simpler formula that quantifies how impressive a player's individual performance is in a given game. The Hollinger Game Score formula is:
PTS + 0.4 * FG - 0.7 * FGA - 0.4*(FTA - FT) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK - 0.4 * PF - TOV. Per
Game Score was created to give a rough measure of a player's productivity for a single game. The scale is similar to that of points scored, (40 is an outstanding performance, 10 is an average performance, etc.).
The entire modern box score of the player is needed for calculation, including offensive and defensive rebounding, steals, blocks and turnovers, so the Hollinger Game Score can only be applied to games played since the 1978 season.
References
External links
Hollinger's ESPN Insider archiveBasketball-Reference.com includes many of Hollinger's statistics
KnickerBlogger.net home of constantly updated PER's
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollinger, John
Living people
Basketball statistics
The New York Sun people
1971 births
Place of birth missing (living people)
People from Mahwah, New Jersey
Sportswriters from New York (state)