Excerpt 1:
Rucker explained that, from his experience, subjective stats — primarily blocks, steals and assists, and sometimes rebounds — were a way to give star treatment. If a player tried to block a shot and the ball fell short, maybe give him the benefit of the doubt on a 50-50 play — block. If a pass was deflected by one defender and recovered by another, choose wisely as to which defender to award the steal. Assists were a thing of beauty, left to the eye of the beholder. To Rucker, it was an unspoken part of the NBA’s marketing machine, a way to get on “SportsCenter” in front of a national audience and grab attention.
Excerpt 2:
Red flags emerge
The internet isn’t stocked with Michael Jordan games from his marvelous 1987-88 season. However, fans may have stumbled upon a video posted to the NBA’s official channel in August 2022 titled “Michael Jordan’s Got 10 Steals In One Game!”
The four-minute highlight reel showed his brilliance from that record-setting game against the New Jersey Nets — his crown jewel of the 1987-88 season — but the video conspicuously shows only six steals. In the comment section, amid a chorus of Jordan praise, some discerning commenters raised their hands and expressed confusion. One commenter remarked: “Still waiting for the 10 steals.”
The game, it turns out, was played at home in Chicago. This only piqued our interest in finding game tapes. Luckily, Lācis dug up five, all at Chicago, for our review, in addition to one found on YouTube. We dove in. It turns out the puzzling “Jordan 10 Steals” video was only the tip of the iceberg.
The six full games we found tapes for from Jordan’s Defensive Player of the Year campaign:
Atlanta at Chicago: Nov. 20, 1987
Indiana at Chicago: Jan. 5, 1988
Denver at Chicago: Jan. 7, 1988
Detroit at Chicago: Jan. 16, 1988
Atlanta at Chicago: Feb. 15, 1988
Boston at Chicago: Mar. 18, 1988
Lācis and I were most interested in the Feb. 15, 1988, game. The official box score indicates the Atlanta Hawks registered 10 turnovers and the Chicago Bulls tallied 10 steals. That detail immediately grabbed our attention. Turnovers fall into two categories: live-ball turnovers and dead-ball turnovers. By rule, dead-ball turnovers (i.e. traveling, out of bounds, 24-second violation, etc.) cannot be steals. For example, if, say, Atlanta’s Kevin Willis traveled on a play, a steal couldn’t be credited to a Bulls defender.
Only live-ball turnovers — like an intercepted pass or a recovered loose ball — can be assigned to a defensive player for a steal. The more live-ball turnovers in a game, the more steals in a game.
The Bulls having 10 steals on 10 Hawks turnovers meant that none of the Hawks turnovers could have been dead-ball turnovers. No travels. No offensive fouls. No ball tossed out of bounds. No 24-second violations. For an entire game. Could it be?
And then we watched the film — independently, as to avoid influencing one another’s findings. We compared notes. Turns out, we both saw the same troubling series of plays.
A 24-second violation by the Hawks’ offense. Later, Atlanta reserve Chris Washburn dribbled off his foot out of bounds. An outlet pass to Dominique Wilkins bounces off his hands and into the scorer’s table. Three dead-ball turnovers — three plays that could not have been considered a steal opportunity. And, yet, the box score indicated zero such plays.
It also meant an opportunity to hand out three excess steals to Bulls players.
We compared notes again. We both saw only two legitimate steals by Michael Jordan. The box score credited him with five. An excess of three steals. (To be precise, we saw two Jordan steals, at best, but possibly only one — when he poked the ball, chased it down and saved it from going out of bounds before throwing it directly to the Hawks for a turnover. The other play — a transition deflection by Jordan’s teammate Mike Brown that was recovered by Jordan — could have gone either way.) There were three steals unaccounted for.
The incongruent turnover/steal columns presented a glaring red flag. In the other five games we watched, the live-ball turnovers and steals did not add up, either. In the Detroit game, eight Chicago steals on six Detroit live-ball turnovers. In the Denver game, 13 Chicago steals on just seven Denver live-ball turnovers. Again and again, the official steal counts were routinely outpacing the possible number of steal opportunities. Something was amiss.
All in all, by our count, the box score showed 59 steals on 41 live-ball turnovers, resulting in a whopping 18 excess steals.
Who benefited from all those extra steals? We brought our attention to Jordan’s accounting. In the six games, the box scores indicated that Jordan’s total steal count was 28. After comparing our notes from the film study, we each counted 12 steals. An astounding difference of 16 excess steals. Almost every excess steal was being allocated to Jordan.
A pattern emerged as the games began to pile up in our film review. It appeared that Jordan benefited from deflections being erroneously recorded as steals. In games where there was a surplus of Jordan steals, we noticed that the turnover/steal counts would closer align after we counted the defensive plays that Jordan poked the ball out of bounds or back into the hands of the opposing team — even if there was no change of possession.
Steals should not be awarded in these instances, but Jordan seemed to benefit from the apparent generosity. And here’s the thing: when other players made the same deflections on both teams, their steal counts tended to be scored by the book — that is, correctly. Twelve steals in six games for Jordan (two steals per game) would be much more in line with his road average that season (2.3) rather than his official home average of four steals.
In the block category, it seemed that Jordan also benefited from some exceptional statkeeping. For instance, whenever Chicago Bulls forward Horace Grant blocked a shot but was whistled for the foul, he was, correctly, not credited with a block. But when Jordan did the same, his box score line tended to show excess blocks.
Something was going on. Which left only one thing to figure out: Who was the Chicago statkeeper?
and just like that Mickey Mouse ring, no amount of articles posted will make that DPOY trophy leave MJs trophy case. Truth is, in real life nobody gives a fukk about that article. shyt was damn near 40 years ago and you still got people chasing the ghost of a nikka that retired 20 yrs ago. Nobody gives a fukk.
