John Hollinger is the Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He used to be an analyst and writer for ESPN who primarily covers the NBA.

Hollinger was born on May 17, 1971 and grew up in Mahwah, New Jersey, USA. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1993. Three years after, he developed the website Alleyoop, which was initially made as a sounding board for his love of the game of basketball. It was also referred to as “The Basketball Page for Thinking Fans,” and became his start to follow the footsteps of noted analysts Dean Oliver and Bob Bellotti. His writing style and incisive commentary caught the attention of Web Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

John Hollinger joined OregonLive.com as a sports editor and spent his three years developing an intimate understanding of the NBA, both as a game and a business. He also developed his Player Efficiency Rating (PER), a figure that attempts to combine all of a player’s contribution into one number. However, it was criticized due to its lack of consideration of shot defense and for overvaluing shot-taking. He also developed The Hollinger Game Score formula to quantify how impressive a player’s individual performance in a given game.

Hollinger was soon hired as the basketball editor at SI.com, the online sister site of Sports Illustrated. He released the first Pro Basketball Prospectus in 2002, his first worked published in print. He has written three more Prospectuses and is now called Pro Basketball Forecasts.

In the summer of 2005, he left Sports Illustrated to write for ESPN.com. He has weekly columns which are available through their “insider” subscription service. He also writes for the New York Sun’s sports edition. Every year, he has appeared on the Basketball Analytics panel at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.