MJ almost certainly does not win the DPOY without those inflated steal and block numbers. It wasn’t as heavily scrutinized of an award back then and games availability was much lower. Box score watching was probably a huge portion of it and MJ stuffed the box score fraudulently. Again, not just subjective plays but invented turnovers.

Now should it seriously matter if he got 4th in DPOY that year versus winning for a GOAT case? No, not to anyone legitimate, but deranged people like Fraudguy have definitely cited it many times over the years as another reason why MJ is GOAT. My position would be MJ is a significantly overrated defender period, fraud stocks or not.

Regardless of all this, it’s pretty alarming the lengths MJ went to creating fake stats. And as I noted earlier, it’s not just him either. The entire era of these types of stats prior to every game being televised and national scrutiny probably needs to be taken with serious suspicion. Guys averaging double steals and blocks at home versus the road is a huge outlier and without easily accessible game footage and daily tracking to verify it seems extremely unlikely. Nowadays there isn’t a questionable stat given without 100 guys who bet on it tweeting about it, and obviously something as crazy as a team having most steals than the opposing team had turnovers could never happen in modern era.

And of course, if it turned out Lebron was colluding with scorekeepers to inflate stats it would be on ESPN for a month straight and one of the biggest scandals in modern sports. With MJ, no one cares.

LuckyStan,
In case you are honestly curious, and want to look at this using logic and reason, the DPOY award is subjective and decided by vote. Michael Jordan had 37 votes. Second place had 9 votes.

Bob Ryan, in the same article you’ve been referencing, was a voter for DPOY in 1988. He voted for Michael Jordan and stated his “stock” totals had nothing to do with it and said there was no controversy at the time.

Did you poll the other 36 people that voted for Jordan and ask them if reducing Jordan’s “stock” total by some amount would have changed their vote? What did they say? Did 28 of them change their minds?

By the way, if you’re curious, Jordan had 6.1 defensive win shares that season. The second place player in DPOY voting had 5.2. Defensive win shares do not contain steals nor blocks in its formula.

But anyway, something something shine on crazy diamonds or whatever it is you stans say these days.

Interesting that you went straight conspiracy on this, and not simply mistakes or errors when recording the stats. No, it’s not a rookie scorekeeper making a mistake in how he determines steals over the course of 5 games, or a homer with some hometown bias (that, as explained in detail in your own article, happens everywhere in every sport), nor a clerical error when transferring data by hand.

No, it’s the lizard people controlling the statkeepers by alien tractor beam. All orchestrated by Michael Jordan and his evil 6 rings, of course. I guess he just turned off the alien tractor beam in every other season of his career that he played in Chicago. Nope, not just variance in stat keeping errors. Definitely aliens.

Wait weren’t you the one that said that only LeBron fans “understand that there is variance”? Lolol

It wasn’t a rookie scorekeeper (don’t know why this was suggested, easy to look this up), and he had a very close relationship with MJ. Obviously not denying he probably had serious Bulls fandom as well which influenced him. Also not denying that other players from the era received benefits as well. The major point here should be that the subjective stats from this so-called great era were most likely heavily juiced due to lack of scrutiny.

Of course variance exists, it is theoretically possible over a small sample for a player to have that type of disparity and that is why you need video evidence. But the lack of game availability makes this impossible to do at scale as many of the games simply aren’t available. But based on the box score data/turnovers discrepancies and the limited games available, the conclusion here becomes quite obvious.

I also agree with the other poster earlier who stated that it was a very well researched piece of journalism but sadly had a bunch of clickbait elements to it in an effort to attract eyeballs. Basically the equivalent of those stupid Mr Beast thumbnails. Scrutinizing MJ/the eras stats heavily has nothing to do with Lebron. The author (Haberstroh) also posted the video evidence and expanded on other things, but it’s paywalled on his substack. I don’t really see the need to pay for this - no reason to doubt his findings.

Eh? I’ve never worked on an NBA scorekeeping crew but I am pretty sure it’s a team of a few people with one person leading. How did you easily find who this crew was for these games and what their experience was? Maybe one of them was out sick or on vacation. Who the hell knows but it doesn’t mean Jordan was in cahoots with the statkeeping mafia to give him a few extra steals against the Hawks one night in February.

There are many possible points where errors and mistakes can happen. Especially 36 years ago. I just think it’s hilarious, and telling, that the known phenomenon of stat keeping error and home bias was immediately and relentlessly used to tear Jordan down. Weird how that happens isn’t it? Waiting for the TikTok trend “WE DON WIT DA SCOREKEEPERS” and the claims that Jordan only averaged single digit ppg in the 80’s.

Mj had around the same stats in 1987 and finished 8th dpoy

1987: 2.9 steal (236) 1.5 blks (125)
1988: 3.2 steal (259) 1.6 blks (131)

If what you say it’s true , how mj finish so far off in 1987 for dpoy if it was that important for those stats ?
I mean worst is mj 87 finish with 37.1 ppg on top of those defensive stats and didn’t even get the mvp , he finished second !

So basically with inferior ppg (35) and slightly superior steal and 6 blocks more in 82 games he won dpoy and mvp in 1988 and nothing in 1987 !
How could he finish so far off in dpoy and mvp 2 in 1987 ?
Not even defence team 2 !?!
Doesn’t seem it support your claim about the importance of those stats does it ?

What probably happened , which happens it seem frequently , in 1988 they wanted to corrected the mistake they made in 1987 .


The award is pretty subjective like mattR said .
Mj was probably winning it even with less blocks and still .

Ps: mj made over 200 steal for 6 seasons .

It seems like both steals and blocks were stats that were easier to come by in the 80s/90s than in the years since? The all time leaders for both stats mostly come from the 80s and 90s.