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The Basketball Jones is a video podcast, blog and television program that analyzes, and often satirizes, the National Basketball Association. The show is written and hosted by Tas Melas, J.E. Skeets and Trey Kerby who is also the head blogger of the site and shot, edited, and produced by Jason Doyle and Matt Osten. Leigh Ellis is also featured on the podcast and occasionally writes for the site.

Background

Melas, Skeets, Doyle and Osten met while attending Ryerson University’s Radio and Television Arts program in Toronto, Canada from 2001 - 2005.[1]

Melas was the co-host of a talk show on SPIRITlive, Ryerson’s Internet radio station, called the “Sports Doctors.” Doyle produced the weekly program. Skeets also co-hosted a show on the station, though it was not sports related.

Upon graduation, Melas worked as a story editor at The Sports Network and Doyle worked as a sound editor for Super Sonics, an audio post-production house. Skeets worked at a physician recruiting firm and Osten attended law school at McGill University.

Skeets began blogging in 2005 when a friend bet him that he could not write a new post every day for a year.[2] The blog was called “J.E. Skeets” and was a hodgepodge of observations, photos, and videos about random, quotidian topics. Later in the year, Skeets wrote a post about basketball which was linked on Deadspin.com. Noticing a significant spike in reader traffic, Skeets began writing exclusively about basketball, usually from an irreverent and humorous perspective. He began to make his name with a popular series titled, “Romance on the Hardwood”.[2] These posts featured a photograph of two NBA players who appeared to be slow dancing accompanied by an imagined conversation between the athletes.

On March 25, 2011, during the weekly Basketball Jones "Overdose" Matt Osten announced he would be participating in the 2012 Iditarod. This will be the 40th running of the Iditarod and promoters are already very excited to have the confirmation from Osten. When announcing his participation, Osten proclaimed "I got's this".


The Podcast's origins

Skeets soon moved his writing to a new website he created called “The Basketball Jones”. Drawing on his past experience with radio, Skeets decided to use the emerging medium of podcasting to produce a basketball-related talk show. He approached Melas and Doyle with the idea and together they worked out the tone and format of the show. When it debuted in January 2006, The Basketball Jones podcast was a half-hour program recorded weekly at Doyle’s house.[3] The show immediately gained a small, but dedicated following. As its popularity increased, the three began recording shows more frequently.

Each show consisted of segments dedicated to the on and off court happenings in the NBA separated by short musical breaks. Regular features included “Wanker of the Week”, in which the hosts highlighted an NBA player, coach, or executive guilty of committing a gaffe and “One-on-One”, in which the hosts took opposing views on a number of topics and argued over them in a “lightning-round” format. The show championed the “fan perspective” of sports reporting pioneered by ESPN’s Bill Simmons. It also paid special attention to the NBA “blogosphere”, a collection of bloggers who maintained web pages about their local teams. Many of these bloggers appeared on the show as experts on their particular team.

The full seasons

At the start of the ‘06 - ’07 season, The Basketball Jones was produced daily in a 15-minute version called “The Fix” and in a half-hour weekly round-up episode. “The Fix” was recorded remotely by Doyle and the hosts interacted with each other through Skype from their respective homes.[3] The group met on the weekend at Doyle’s residence to record the longer show.

Though the show’s audience grew, the three partners became unsatisfied with the poor audio quality yielded by recording the show over the Internet. During the ‘07 - ‘08 season, The Basketball Jones was recorded daily in a studio at Super Sonics Productions in downtown Toronto and produced as a 20 minute show. The improved sound quality, word of mouth, and Skeets’ growing popularity as a writer on Deadspin.com[4] brought more listeners, bouncing the show into iTunes’ top 100 most popular podcasts.[3] At this time, the website, thebasketballjones.net, registered approximately 60,000 page views per month.[3] Towards the end of the season, Skeets was hired by Yahoo! Sports to edit their basketball blog which he renamed, “Ball Don’t Lie”.[5]

For the ‘08 - ‘09 season the show became a video podcast and was filmed in a downtown apartment building. The length of the show was shortened to 15 minutes.[6] In addition to being available on thebasketballjones.net, the video podcast was also embedded daily on the Ball Don’t Lie website.

Matt Osten, a Montreal native and graduate of McGill University's Faculty of Law, officially joined The Basketball Jones at the start of the '09 - '10 season. Osten is also nicknamed, The Savage Bodyguard, and he only wears white suits while on bodyguard duty. Matt coined the phrase, "two towel performance", and regularly puts in a two towel performance during their off-season podcast, The Blank Jones.

Leigh Ellis joined the podcast during the No Season Required tour. Ellis frequently appears on the podcast and shares his Tweets of the week.

The Jones recorded a live 500th episode on January 15, 2010.

On March 1, 2010 The Jones proudly announced that they have officially joined The Score, a Canadian multi-media sports network.

During the 2011-2012 NBA season, The Basketball Jones made a deal with the NBA to produce content that would be featured on NBAtv and NBA.com. Although numbers were not disclosed multiple sources say the contract was worth over "7 figures"

Show format

Each podcast begins with Skeets announcing the number of the episode, the date and random phrase (Ex: “More is not always better.”, "I'm the one who's fighting. Not you, not you, and not you." or "There are over a 1000 different types of bananas") over a random song by Ja Rule feat. either Ashanti or Jennifer Lopez. The "bouncing balls" opening graphics then continues with the theme song “Bones Attack!!” by The Meligrove Band.[7]

Skeets begins each show with the greeting, “Good morning, sweet world!”. Skeets introduces Melas and then Doyle to which he responds, “Hello!”. The hosts then switch off reading the daily headlines.

Currently, the show is divided into one main talking segment followed by a shorter one that includes viewer’s questions, “The ‘Whoa Boy’ Fantasy Line of the Night”, and a feature in which the hosts compete at selecting winning teams based on gambling odds. Wednesday's shows typically feature NBA Doodles sent in by fans of the show, which are then critiqued/graded by Tas and Skeets. Melas always ends the show with a quote to which Skeets replies, “Sound advice.”

The Overdose, the hour long audio-only episode on Friday, features interview, commentary and frequently diverts from basketball into the wacky stories from the NBA's week. The Overdose features the Pun Gun game, where Skeets, Melas, Osten, Kerby and Ellis make puns on an NBA players name. Also Leigh Ellis shares his Tweets of the week suggested by listeners on Twitter. "Dirty Talk" by James Wallace is used as the opening song for listener mail during The Overdose.[8]

Skeets’ frequent malapropisms such as “The Internets” and mispronunciations such as Shane “Ba-ché”, Melas’ peculiar analogies and love of the phrase "There's no doubt about that", and Doyle’s eclectic musical selections are all hallmarks of the show.

During the podcast's first three seasons, Caroline Lesley, a New York-based actress introduced the show and recorded several interstitials that ran at the episode's breaks. She has not been incorporated into the video podcast.[6]

Skeets’ writing has appeared on ESPN.com[9] and Deadspin.com.[10]

Melas has appeared as a pundit on Raptors NBA TV.

Doyle is the co-host and producer of “Idol Chatter”, a podcast about reality television. He has also done sound editing work for many animated television programs including Atomic Betty, Carl Squared, and Johnny Test.

The Basketball Jones has been featured on ESPN, The New York Times,[11] and The Globe and Mail.[3]

For the 2012 NBA season, The podcast was featured on Bill Simmons Grantland Network podcast

References

  1. ^ Mike Payne (April 11, 2008). "GearCrave Interview: The Basketball Jones". GearCrave.
  2. ^ a b Blogger Interviews: J.E. Skeets, The Big Picture, Friday, May 04, 2007
  3. ^ a b c d e Sam Toman & Andrew Chin (April 18, 2008). "These podcasters are a slam dunk". The Globe and Mail. Toronto.
  4. ^ http://deadspin.com/tag/je-skeets/
  5. ^ "Ball Don't Lie", Yahoo Sports
  6. ^ a b http://thebasketballjones.net/post/57512457/a-peek-behind-the-curtain [dead link]
  7. ^ "TBJ FAQ".
  8. ^ "TBJ FAQ".
  9. ^ "TrueHoop Wants To Know …". October 25, 2007.
  10. ^ http://deadspin.com/tag/je-skeets/
  11. ^ Fred Bierman & Benjamin Hoffman (December 17, 2006). "PRO BASKETBALL; OFF THE DRIBBLE". The New York Times.

Skeets believes that waffles and French toast are superior to pancakes.

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