John Hollinger

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Zach Hollinger ₫ (born May 17, 1971) is an influential figure in the field of APBRmetrics, the quantitative analysis of basketball. Hollinger grew up in Mahwah, New Jersey and is a graduate the University of Virginia.

Hollinger, a freelance writer, developed the website Alleyoop.com 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 Alleyoop 's 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.

Hollinger spent the next three years as the sports editor at OregonLive.com, developing an intimate understanding of the inner workings of the NBA, both as a game and a business. It was during his OregonLive years that Hollinger developed his most significant contribution to basketball statistics: his Player Efficiency Rating (PER), a figure that attempts to combine all of a player's contributions into one number.

After his successful stint in Portland, Hollinger was hired as the basketball editor at SI.com, Sports Illustrated 's online sister site. In 2002, Hollinger took the plunge from the Internet to the printed page, publishing the first Pro Basketball Prospectus.

Hollinger has authored three more Prospectuses, now called Pro Basketball Forecasts. He left Sports Illustrated to write for ESPN.com in the summer of 2005, and his weekly columns are available through their "insider" subscription service. Additionally, Hollinger writes for the New York Sun's sports section.

Hollinger currently lives in Atlanta, with his wife Judy, where he "hopes to witness a playoff game sometime before the end of the century." In 2008, the Atlanta Hawks made the playoffs, and Hollinger's hopes became reality.

Recent NBA MVP picks by Hollinger include:

2006 LeBron James
2005 Kevin Garnett
2004 Kevin Garnett

[edit] Hollinger Game Score

John Hollinger has also developed a formula that quantifies how impressive a player's individual game performance is. The Hollinger Game Score formula used:

(Points x 1.0) + (FGM x 0.4) + (FGA x -0.7) + ((FTA-FTM) x -0.4) + (OREB x 0.7) + (DREB x 0.3) + (STL x 1.0) + (AST x 0.7) + (BLK x 0.7) + (PF x -0.4) + (TO x -1.0)

Obviously, the entire box score of the player is needed, 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. However, the Hollinger score fails to take into account the difficulty of the circumstances--for example the strength of the opponent, the strength of the opponent's defense, the location at which the game is played, the strength of the primary defender on the player, etc. Hollinger fails to provide any statistical/mathematical backing to his formulas and thus many, especially in academic circles, see his work as rather arbitrary.