The NBA Website

The job of overseeing all that action (off the court, that is) belongs to Brenda Spoonemore, the Vice President of Interactive Services for NBA Entertainment. She supervises the integration, development and production of the NBA.com Internet Network, which consists of 60 unique Web sites.

Those sites include NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBDL.com, 29 NBA team sites, 16 WNBA team sites, 8 NBDL team sites and four international sections of NBA.com. In addition to the NBA.com Network, Spoonemore oversees the NBA and WNBA CRM and database marketing initiatives.

She is also a part of the NBA executive team which has developed and leveraged partnerships with leading global Internet services, communications, commerce, media and technology companies including IBM, America Online, Yahoo!, the Disney Internet Group, Real Networks, Sportsline.com, and ECS.

Under Spoonemore's direction, the NBA.com Network has launched a variety of innovative features including "Highlights at the Quarter," which allows users to access complete five-minute video packages updated every half-hour on game nights, summarizing the latest NBA news and highlights from in-progress games.

Also, the NBA became the first professional sports league to Webcast a live game when NBA.com streamed live video and audio of the Dallas Mavericks-Sacramento Kings game on April 13, 2001. The groundbreaking cybercast was seen in over 87 countries around the world, including 30,000 visitors from China.

Before joining the NBA, Spoonemore served as a General Editor for ESPN The Magazine, covering the NBA and WNBA and pioneering "The Pulse," a front-of-the-book section of the magazine dedicated to sports and sports technology on the Internet. Prior to that, she was the Editor-In-Chief of NBA.com for Starwave Corporation, now a part of the Disney Internet Group.

Spoonemore holds a B.A. in English from Pomona College in California and a Master's degree in English from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. A native of Seattle, Washington, she now resides in New York City.

Following, Spoonemore answers questions about the NBA on the internet:

How, in basic terms, is nba.com structured? That is, how much is done centrally? How much is done by each team? Is everything funneled through a central editor or group of editors?

Spoonemore: All team sites are editorially independent, but there is one central technical infrastructure which supports the league and team sites — including NBA.com, the NBA team sites, WNBA.com, the WNBA team sites, NBDL.com and teams, Jr. NBA/WNBA and a variety of internationally-targeted and event sites. There is a central 7-day a week newsdesk, plus team and feature editors at the league level; teams also have remote publishing tools and publish their sites directly from their home cities.

Because of the ever-changing statistics and standings, how is the system set up to handle this influx of information? Is it all databased or is another method used?

Spoonemore: NBA Entertainment has end to end statistical systems that begin with courtside entry in each arena, are fed back to a central location in real time, and then are distributed to on-air and on-line outlets. After the completion of live events, information is databased and the combination of live feeds and databases drives all stats on the site, including live game stats, leaders, career stats, schedule information, etc.

How big is your staff and how specialized is each division of it? In other words, do you have people who only work on statistics, while others are copy editors, and others do graphics only, or do other departments do those things and feed them to programmers for the internet?

Spoonemore: We are a fully integrated operation, which means that technical resources are housed in the IT dept, which also supports the teams, stats system, corporate infrastructure and event operations. Our newsdesk is fully integrated with NBA TV, including video and coordinated news coverage; our design team is part of our in-house Creative Services group, which also supports print, CD-ROM, DVD, broadcast and other creative formats; and our advertising/marketing support comes from the Global Marketing and Media Group, so that we can design and execute platforms across NBAE's various electronic, print and grassroots assets. There are some central editors dedicated to features/events and team sites.

What types of things that come up give you the most difficulty and what have you learned since you began that either surprised you or disappointed you?

Spoonemore: NBA Entertainment has always taken the view that our digital content is one of a number of ways to reach our fans, to tell stories and let them interact with the game. This has led to an integrated approach to the business, from staffing to selling. Our high and growing international penetration continues to be a trademark of the site, and we look forward to how the current 40% international usage may grow as more international players come into the league — including, now, several high profile Chinese players. According to a recent study, internet usage in mainland China is doubling every 6 months which presents an unprecedented challenge and opportunity for global brands such as the NBA.

How much involvement with the individual team sites do the centralized figures have?

Spoonemore: Depends on how much support is needed; we provide as much as is necessary to maintain high editorial, technical and design standards across the sites.

Your pages are set up on 750-pixel width, and there are obviously a lot of bells and whistles on the site. Why have you chosen that particular size page and do you make allowances for viewers with smaller monitor values and fewer capabilities to handle the various scripts and other items that appear on the site?

Spoonemore: With international audience of nearly 40 percent of our overall traffic and a significant home usage population, we generally develop and design for the lower middle of the spectrum on bread and butter content (e.g.: previews, recaps and stats), and save some of the more complex functions for feature or event-type coverage. We test across all of the versions of Netscape/AOL and IE that have significant market penetration.

Do you use styles sheets or includes, how much do you rely on them, and why do you choose to use them? Spoonemore: We have used style sheets aggressively in the past, but have more recently been moving away from that tactic as it seems to limit the range of options and can create some unnecessary bottlenecks with initial page loads.

How often is the site redesigned or restructured?

Spoonemore: We test out new features and designs on an ongoing basis, using event sections as a testbed (e.g.: Finals, All-Star, Draft, etc). The best of those componenets then find their way into the sites at large. On the technical side, we are extremely pleased with the efficiency of our backend performance now, following a relaunch 18 months ago and some additional upgrades to the system since then.

What do you think is the most important thing web designers can learn from looking at nba.com and the way things are done there?

Spoonemore: Form follows function. Design and technology should make it easier to navigate and display information, and should always be in the service of the fan's best interests.