TBJ is lowpost.net's featured blog this week. I interviewed J.E. Skeets on Saturday. Here's the transcript:
Before The Basketball Jones launched, you wrote on jeskeets.com. How did that site evolve into today's Basketball Jones?
J.E. Skeets started on January 1, 2005. It was a complete bet with my friends right before New Years in 2004. I was sending a lot of emails and whatnot, and they were like, "You should do a site or something," and I was like, "All right, yeah, I'll see if I can write something every day." And they said yeah, it'll last two weeks, it'll last three weeks, whatever. It started as jeskeets.com (I guess it was on blogspot at the time). I just started writing, and that went well, and my friends were checking it out, and maybe their friends too.
In October or November, I was running out of things to write about (you can only write about the weirdos you see on the streetcar so many times). So, I started writing about basketball. I guess I saw Deadspin, when it was still fairly new, and I wrote something about signs on Doug Christie. I sent it in (like, whatever), and Will put it up, and obviously, your hits go through the roof, and this was even when Deadspin was pretty small. I thought that was sort of cool to have a lot more people reading about it. So I just started writing about basketball a lot more, and more and more people started coming.
And then I talked to Tas and Jason (JD). I went to school with these guys, and Tas wanted to get into doing something with basketball in the media. We were like, "You know what, why don't we just start a podcast?" That's actually why The Basketball Jones started. And I was sort of thinking that I had been writing a long time, and writing more and more about basketball on jeskeets.com, so why not have more of a basketball site. So we started that up in January '06. It was solely for the podcast (the first couple of posts I think were just the podcast), but then I continued writing over there and it just kind of snowballed into whatever it is now.
I assume you get a lot more readers to the site than listeners to the podcast.
Definitely, and that's something we're trying to work on. The real baby to me is the podcast. That's what I really enjoy doing, and obviously Tas, too. We feel that there aren't that many out there, and the ones that are aren't that great, so that's where we try to focus a lot of our attention. I love writing too, and you're right—more people will come to the site because you wrote something stupid or funny about two guys dancing. They can quickly read that, whereas it's a lot harder to get them to click on an mp3 and listen for 15 or 30 minutes to your show. We've been trying to get more and more people to do that, and it's been working. But we still get many more readers than we do listeners, for sure.
How much work goes into the podcasts? Is there anyone else beyond the three of you?
It's just us three. When we were only doing a podcast once a week, it was basically Tas and I doing all the content. JD's not even a huge basketball fan, but he's amazing at what he does with all the audio stuff. We'd go over to the studio (our sort of makeshift studio), and the three of us would just get together, and JD would have the music ready, and Tas and I would have all of the content, it would take us maybe an hour, or maybe an hour and half if we're just joking around, for a half-hour show at Jason's house.
For the morning show, Tas and I will wake up at about 5 and try to get as much basketball knowledge in our heads as possible, trying to find out what happened the night before, what are the big storylines, what we should talk about, if we got any mail, yadda yadda. And Jason comes on at about 5:20, and we start talking about how we're going to go with this. We have a pretty good layout now; we sort of know where we're going, we're doing headlines and this and that. Tas and I usually have to do some writing for the headlines, and we're trying to record by 6:00am. If all goes well, a 15-minute show should only take us 20-25 minutes, with stops and whatnot.
You guys try to keep pretty consistent about the length of the show. Any reason for that?
We just think it looks cool. You're right—there's really no point, because that's the cool thing about podcasts (you can get on and talk for as long as you want). The reason for us in some sense is that we hope to turn this into something maybe a bit bigger (hopefully getting paid to do it somewhere down the line, or something like that). We just think it looks more professional, and if someone ever did come to us and say, you guys should be on radio, or we want to pay you to do this, I think it's something that they would look at, if you guys can make it 15 minutes every time or 30 minutes. It just adds a sense of professionalism to it.
That gets to one of the other questions I had: What's your ideal job? I assume you'd love to be working in basketball full-time.
Without a doubt. As for my exact dream job, I have no idea. I guess if someone came and gave us tons of money so that we could get up and not do it on Skype, our morning show, and be in the studio ... that would be ideal. I just want to keep writing and talking about basketball—it's a lot of fun, especially with the NBA blogosphere that's out there. The thing for us, which is really cool and why we started to do the daily morning show is that we started to realize that a lot of international NBA fans, they got nothing. Their content is basically all on the Internet. They don't have tons of games to watch, or a lot of highlight packages to watch on their local television. So we have just gotten tons of emails from throughout the world, saying, "Your show comes on here at noon, and it's perfect because we get caught up on the NBA."
Ideal job would be to be paid for what we do now, and take it to a whole another level. We want to get into video podcasting, and all that, too. There are lots to tackle still.
So, if the broadcast career takes off, would you still want to keep writing?
I'm a horrible writer. I hated writing in school, and I'm pretty ass at it—maybe not creative stuff, but generic, what's-going-on type of stuff, I'm not that good at. I'm not nearly as talented as everyone that appears on lowpost. I don't want to stop doing it by any means. I enjoy it and I think people get a kick out of it. I think it'll still be a big part of The Basketball Jones, yeah.
With the writing, obviously you do a great job of finding crazy stuff out on the Internet. Do you spend a ton of time surfing around every day?
Henry [Abbott of TrueHoop] actually helped me out with getting a bunch of RSS feeds. He gave me a lot of advice on that. I use lowpost; I probably read lowpost more than you do. I'm basically just checking all the time, and a lot of people send stuff in now, which is really cool. In the beginning, you have to be out there, to find all of this weird stuff. Now, more and more people are sending tips in, and saying, "You gotta to check this out." That's cool, and it makes my job a lot easier to get it up on the site.
Your base of commenters is strong as well. Last week you had the Sam Mitchell chess post that came directly from your readers.
Yeah, exactly, I didn't even write that post. A commenter wrote that (he's actually a friend of mine), and Howie at ... his crazy long blog title ... did the picture, I didn't even do anything. I just put it up, and it's probably one of the funniest things we've ever had on the site. It's cool—I really like the community in the NBA blogosphere and all of the commenters and stuff like that. It's neat because everyone seems to want to help each other out. Howie didn't have to do that, but he wants to, and it helps him, because more people will go to him, and it gets his name out a little bit. I really like that—I think it's really cool.
You obviously spend a lot of time leaving comments on other people's blogs ... sometimes it looks like you've got interns doing that for you.
I don't. I could use some, so if they want to contact me ...
Yeah, I enjoy reading tons of blogs. When I write something, I like for people to weigh in, or tell me I'm wrong, or say they agree or what not, or expand on my thought. So, I just try to do the same to all the other guys or girls that I like to read out there. Do I do it a lot? Maybe it looks creepy, does it?
I see a lot.
It probably is creepy. I should cut down, then.
How did you come with the J.E. Skeets name?
I'll just use my imagination.
Yeah ... you'll never get it with that.
Do you have any favorite posts from either TBJ or the old site?
I've always found it absolutely hilarious how many people really enjoy those Romance on the Hardwood things. To me, it was like obviously a complete joke. Someone, I think it may have been one of my friends, saw the picture and sent it in and said it looks like they're at the prom or something. So I said, yeah it does, and just wrote the thing. Some of those are my favorite ones. I was a fan of the Bruce Bowen one, when the Chuck Norris thing was going on.
That's my personal favorite.
Yeah, that one I put a lot of time into.
... Abstinence is 100%. Bruce Bowen is 101% ...
Right. I like making fun of Bruce Bowen, too. Which others? Recently, [thinks for a minute] ... they all suck.
Ha. According to the lowpost.net database, the post that people have linked to the most on TBJ was How To Take The Perfect Rookie Portrait.
Yeah, you know what, I put a lot of time into that one, too. The other one that I also got a lot of response from, and it's probably because of the people I was writing about, was the Marbury and Steve Francis one, where they were just hanging out, just shooting the shit. That one I got tons of emails for. It's funny, every time I do one of those Romance on the Hardwood posts, I get 15-20 new pictures, saying do it for this one or that one. It's sort of my thing now I guess ... which is not something to put on a resume.
The Raptors' easiest stretch of the year comes in March. 10 of their 14 opponents in that month currently have losing records. Does Colangelo wait until February to fire Sam Mitchell so that the new guy (Hubie Brown or whoever) gets off to a good start?
That's brilliant. Colangelo is so shifty that he would do that, so yes, I agree with that.
Oh, wow. You've done your homework. Donatello is the leader of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; there's no doubt. Everyone thinks it's Leonardo, but they're wrong. I've had so many people say, "C'mon, why don't you do a post on it and explain it to me." But I can't—I just know it, all right? The Donatello would have to be LeBron, with the power in that bo. That was the best, I don't care. They say those kitana blades were awesome that Leonardo had, but if you ever played the video games, the bo was fantastic because it had long reach, right? You could go through the floors and stuff. So, LeBron would be Donatello, without a doubt. I would make Wade Leonardo.
Bosh has gotta be Rafael, right?
Yeah. That's fair. Who does that leave? Carmelo, bit of a party guy, maybe? Cowabunga? Sure, he can be Michelangelo.
Moving on. How bothered are you that Canada still doesn't have a WNBA team?
Extremely bothered. I can't sleep at night, half the time I get the shakes. Because I think we would dominate it. We would have to have just Canadian women on the team. If I owned a Canadian WNBA team, that would be my rule. And we would wear flannel. That would be a cool jersey: flannel.
We are called the Basketball Jones, but that is one facet of basketball that I do not follow.
Todd MacCulloch, oh boy. He almost has to, by default, I think. I remember I was so angry when I found out that Todd MacCulloch was the first Canadian guy on SLAM magazine cover. I actually got in a fight with the guys at SLAM before I knew them about that. He was actually good, until his feet betrayed him. So yes, he's my starting centre, sure. He seems like a good guy, too.
Vertical leap of about one inch, but he could catch the ball and lay it in.
Right, it might have even been minus, actually. He was fascinating. He was actually good; he was a solid NBA centre. Well, maybe not in today's game; he's worse than Big Z. He would start for me without a doubt. I'd start him at the point guard, though—ust to throw the other team for a loop.
Right. Bring Nash off the bench?
Exactly. Bring that spark plug.
[Thoughtful pause...] I would take the Raptors season tickets. I sit up in the nosebleeds at the ACC now, and I've sat down there a couple of times. As much as I love The Roots and watching them perform live, I've gotta go with the Raptors, because when I'm down there, it's like stimulation overload. I don't even watch the game when I sit down there—there's so much to look at and try to take in. I love it, I absolutely love it. I would take the courtside season Raps tickets, for sure. For sure.
But The Roots would perform hopefully at halftime.
Great interview, by the way. TBJ is definitely a favorite.