STF Q&A: John Gasaway of Basketball Prospectus

From time to time, we here at STF like to talk to college basketball writers who know much, much more about basketball than we do. Today, we talk to John Gasaway, writer for the brand new Basketball Prospectus and formerly of the amazing The Big Ten Wonk. We were able to exchange a few emails with John, one of the pioneers of college basketball blogging. Enjoy!

Q&A with John Gasaway

STF: You started Big Ten Wonk way back in 2004, when not many people had even heard of a blog. What was your original inspiration and were some of the challenges in gaining an audience back then?


JG:You definitely have the "way back" part right. In blog time, mastodons roamed the earth in 2004. My first post appeared a few hours after Bush defeated Kerry and the weird thing is I didn't even have the awareness or heft or something to do a "here I am" inaugural post. I was curious about how this whole "blog" thing worked and so I just started in writing about college hoops. And as for building an audience, I was clueless so I didn't know I didn't have one. Now that I'm a little less clueless I know that you're always building an audience.

STF: You're possibly best known for your tempo-free stats. Can you please explain these stats for an uneducated audience? Was this something you had always been doing, or something that developed on while working on the Wonk?


JG: Well, of course, they're not particularly "my" tempo-free stats. It's true I cook up my own stats for conference games in about seven or eight conferences but even in that endeavor I stand on the shoulders of nerdy giants like Dean Oliver and Ken Pomeroy. The good news is these stats are easy to explain to any audience, educated or otherwise: this ain't rocket science. Any worthwhile stat in any sport measures how well a player or a team does per opportunity. If I say "John Gasaway hit four home runs," it matters whether we're talking about a game or a season. In basketball, it turns out using per-game stats is close to meaningless, due to teams' differing paces and players' differing minutes. Per possession is the way to go.



And no, an English major like me didn't bring tempo-free stats pre-packaged and ready to go to blogging, at least not at the start. Ken, for one, got here before I did. But pretty much the day I was aware this stuff was out there I jumped in with both feet and was already creating labels like "points per weighted shot" when the blog was about a month old. Then for about two years I was mystified that the rest of the world was taking so long. Now I think maybe we've finally turned that corner.

STF: You've recently moved to the all-new Basketball Prospectus. How has the move been so far? Has your audience followed to BP? Do you and Ken ever get into mental stat-battles with the baseball guys?

JG: Baseball Prospectus pretty much laid down the template as far as posting enlightening and groundbreaking sports analysis on the web. I was delighted to take that baton, along with Ken, and see if we could be in on the ground floor as far as starting the same kind of site for college hoops.



As for "my" audience, they're now reading alongside Ken's and John Perrotto's, not to mention alongside NBA fans who read Kevin Pelton and Bradford Doolittle. The audience is bigger but of course it's not just "my" audience anymore. I've gone from the solo artist to the supergroup. Anyway, it's cool.



And, yes, Ken and I totally dominate the baseball guys at lunch in the Prospectus cafeteria. It's like I'm Nelson Muntz, Ken is Jimbo Jones, and the baseball guys collectively are Millhouse. We give them wedgies and steal their milk money on a daily basis. I like it a lot.


STF: Was it difficult to finally end Big Ten Wonk?


JG: No doubt. It was absolutely the right thing to do but that doesn't mean it was easy. I'd done it for three full seasons and I didn't want to write about teams a fourth time that maybe weren't intrinsically interesting to me but that happened to share a conference affiliation with my blog title. Not to mention a close read of the final year shows I was already straying promiscuously. Still, I loved that blog. I loved doing it and I loved the variegated and fun group of people that spontaneously gathered around it. Big Ten Wonk was the first of what I intend to be several sweet rides.

STF: What is the "hot stat" for 2007-08?

JG: I think tempo-free stats qua tempo-free stats will be "the hot stat" this year. Maybe their time has come at last. They've come to rule the blogosphere, certainly, and I'm seeing them pop up in more and more MSM settings. Even more significantly, references to archaic and meaningless husks like "points allowed per game" and "rebounding margin" actually seem to be subsiding dramatically. Or maybe I'm just too optimistic. Who knows.

STF: I know that you touched on this at Big Ten Wonk and I've got my own personal opinions, but why do you think there is lack of quality college basketball blogs?


JG: It ain't for lack of talent, goodness knows. I hear from bright, perceptive and interesting bloggers almost daily. I think it's the form. Most blogs are team-based and that presents obstacles to a college basketball blog that are well nigh insuperable. It's infinitely easier to have a great team-based blog about college football than it is to have one about college basketball. In football there are only about 12 games and they occur weekly. The season itself imposes a rational and maybe even elegant structure on your blog. But if you're doing a team-based blog about college hoops, you've signed on to write about 30+ games that pop up whenever they pop up. If I were doing a blog about a team, I'd just try to incorporate the games into what I want to do instead of being driven by them. I've got five months to write about my view on this team and this year nationally. Go.


STF: The Big Ten has been heavily criticized of late, with many calling it "boring" and "overrated". Do these complaints have any merit or is the Big Ten just getting a bad rap?


JG: I can't believe anyone would call the Big Ten overrated right now. Clearly the bottom of the conference is absolutely horrible this year and just as clearly everyone knows it. It seems to me the Big Ten is being rated pretty accurately, just like a plane crash is rated pretty accurately. Now, boring? It's true the slower pace is not my cup of tea. Then again Georgetown didn't draw too many complaints about their style last year and they were slower than every Big Ten team except Northwestern. If you're good, people forgive you your style. If you're bad, it doesn't really matter if you run up and down the court. What matters is success.

STF: Final (loaded) question; all-time favorite venue, team and player in Big Ten history?

JG: Venue: I'm going to stray outside the Big Ten on this one because Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler is in a class by itself. Most people know it's where the final scenes of "Hoosiers" were shot. That's nice, but to actually see a game there when there's a capacity crowd is a basketball sacrament. Hinkle is the Chartres Cathedral of hoops. Team: Michigan State, 2000. Player: Tim Doyle, Northwestern, 2004-07. If all of us exceeded our potential the way he did, we'd be comparing our Nobel Prizes instead of flat screens.