UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kirk Goldsberry, NBA analyst, author and Penn State alumnus, will deliver a talk titled “Mapping the Modern NBA: How Cartography Helped Change Basketball Forever” as part of the Department of Geography’s Coffee Hour lecture series. The event will be held at noon on Friday, Sept. 26, in 102 Paterno Library on the University Park campus and via Zoom.
Goldsberry will explore how cartography, spatial reasoning and data visualization have helped redefine professional basketball in the 21st century. As professional sports entered the era of big data, visual and spatial analytics have become essential tools for understanding performance in the NBA. His talk will highlight how these methods transformed how teams analyze play and make strategic decisions.
A 1999 graduate of Penn State with a bachelor’s degree in geography, Goldsberry earned a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2007. He previously served as vice president of strategic research for the San Antonio Spurs and lead analyst for Team USA Basketball. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in NBA analytics and is the author of “Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA,” a New York Times bestseller.
Goldsberry’s writing and data-driven graphics have appeared in The New York Times, ESPN, Grantland and The Ringer, where he currently serves as an NBA analyst. He also is the executive director of the Business of Sports Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and lives in Austin with his family. He can be found on Instagram and X at @kirkgoldsberry.
Goldsberry’s lecture is part of the fall 2025 "Coffee Hour" seminar series hosted by Penn State’s Department of Geography. For more information and to access Zoom details, visit the Coffee Hour event webpage.