NBA writer contests Michael Jordan’s 1988 DPOY victory

In light of his claims that a sympathetic Chicago Stadium scorekeeper inflated Michael Jordan’s steal and block totals, Yahoo’s Tom Haberstroh wrote a lengthy piece on Thursday casting doubt on the 1988 Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) Award winner.

Were Michael Jordan’s steal and block statistics from 1987–88 genuinely inflated? And would that make his 1988 DPOY win less significant or void?

An overview of the essay and its implications for Jordan’s defensive legacy can be seen below.

As stated in the article:

Sportswriters examining the statistics standings at the conclusion of the season were overpowered by the garish per-game totals that were displayed next to Jordan’s name: 3.2 thefts and 1.6 blocks. That has never been surpassed to this day.

“The eye-popping stats propelled Jordan to his first Defensive Player of the Year award, earning 37 votes from writers, besting rim-protecting centers Mark Eaton (9) and Hakeem Olajuwon (7).”

The first two individuals to provide evidence that Jordans’ steals and blocks were inflated are Reinis Lacis, an amateur statistician from Latvia, and Alex Rucker, a scorekeeper for the Vancouver Grizzlies in the mid-1990s.

During his tenure in the league, Rucker spoke to the pervasiveness of home stat padding, while Lacis examined six complete games from Jordan’s DPOY campaign and discovered that box scores gave him 18 more steals than he actually had.

Though the anecdotes are fascinating, Jordan’s home and road splits provide the clearest, most convincing evidence that his 1987–88 stats were exaggerated.

Jordan participated in all 82 games that season and was given credit for 165 thefts and 87 blocks in 41 home games, but just 94 steals and 47 blocks in 41 away games.

If the extra blocks and steals that Chicago Bulls scorekeeper Bob Rosenberg gave Jordan credit for helped him win his one and only DPOY trophy, then it is reasonable to doubt the award’s legitimacy.

If we were to take 125 percent of his road stats—that is, the average difference between his home and road stats during his 20s—then his averages for 1987–88 would be more like 1.3 blocks and 2.6 steals per game rather than the 3.2 and 1.7 that he is still credited with.

However, Jordan was by no means the only athlete in that year or that era to profit from stat padding. Playing in all 82 games, 1988 DPOY runner-up Mark Eaton (nine votes) had 176 blocks at home compared to just 128 on the road.

Alvin Robertson, who received six votes and finished in fourth place, had an incredible 48 blocks at home compared to just 21 on the road, and he had 145 thefts at home versus 98 on the road.

Yes, in the one and only year when his blocks and thefts were somewhat inflated, Jordan won his 1988 DPOY award.

He did, however, also win 1988 DPOY, receiving 37 of the 80 votes, which was more than the combined total of the runners-up through fifth place. In addition to winning his first MVP with ease, he made the All-Defensive team for the first time.