Team records are always much better at home because players perform much better at home - Jaren jackson showed this kind of home boost in 2023 when he won DPOY and so did prior DPOY's - so there's no evidence the stats were inflated in prior eras.. Teams and players simply perform much better at home and always have.. Btw, the lower overall home inflation in the modern game is due to road trips not being the drain that they once were due to private jets and modern accommodations, while also having easier scheduling for road trips than prior eras (more days in between).. And fans are generally nicer and get thrown out if they bother players.

Ultimately, Jordan's slightly higher bounce at home than other DPOY's like Jaren Jackson or Alvin Robertson is because high shot-blockers see great boost at home on blocks (Eaton or Jaren Jackson), while high steals guys see a great boost in steals (Robertson), but Jordan is the only DPOY that is high in both categories - so his overall "stock" inflation (blocks and steals combined) is a little higher.. In addition being elite in both steals and blocks, MJ was the goat scorer, so these factors made him a unique DPOY with different stats than normal DPOY's.

The 5-game sample is meant to refute this and say that MJ's abnormal home inflation is due to bad record-keeping.. But obviously, a 5-game sample isn't viable and no sample is possible because there's no reason to believe the new subjective ruling is any better than the original.. Subjective stats like steals, blocks, assists and rebounds are set in stone - there's no effective review of them..

Was 1987 inflated too ?
About the other 4 season with over 200 steals ?
And again , with basically the same stats in 1987 , why those stats in 1988 matters so much but not in 1987 for the dpoy ?

FWIW let’s jump to 2003 shrug .
40 years old on 1 leg , mj got 123 steals , finish 23rd in the league
AI finish with 225 steals .
Still over 200 .
What MJ seem to do early on in his career seem perfectly doable even if it could be a little inflated shrug .

For the blks issues , mj finish 16th in 1987 and 14th in 1988 .
With mj athletic abilities it’s perfectly possible he earn them and was far behind the league top blocker anyway .
3 players had over 200 blks in 1987 and 5 players had over 200 blks in 1988 .

What made mj special was the combo of those 2 stats of steal and blks (which Hakeem was able to do as well one year) but taken individually it was nothing so special .
In 1988 5 players plus MJ made over 200 steals …
In 1987 4 players plus MJ made over 200 steals .
It’s not like mj was a special case shrug .

yes, those stats were inflated 25-50% as opposed to 100% in '88. i suppose '88 stats matter because they're the subject of the article and the year he won dpoy which looms large in goat discussions. to the rest of your post -- not arguing 200 steals in a season is impossible, just that mj's defensive stats were serially inflated. he was still a good defender.

go back last ten years of dpoys and there is zero home bias for defensive stats outside of jackson, an outlier who had 50% more blocks that one season, and hasn't replicated that in any of his other seasons. compare to jordan who consistently had 25-50% higher steals at home every season, 100% in his dpoy year.

lol

Teams in the last 10 years have smaller gaps in home and road performance for obvious reasons that have nothing to do with bad record-keeping.

it's a documented fact that today's teams get more days off on the road than prior eras - this alone accounts for the lower road performance of prior eras and is a far better reason than bad record-keeping.. Today's era doesn't have to fly coach and it's the Curry spacing era of less physicality with cushy modern amenities, and friendly fans (players can throw fans out of the arena).

These are all better reasons than bad record-keeping - the modern era and Adam Silver have gone to great lengths to normalize the home-road transition.

Again, the record-keeping argument is a bad excuse for weaker road performance in prior eras and there's no evidence for that, whereas the evidence I presented about today's easier road environment are facts.. Teams have gotten much better at normalizing the road experience as time progressed - the numbers show this and this is a better reason for the gap closing on home/road performance than the imaginary record-keeping excuse which has no proof.

So this garbage has been thoroughly debunked and it's actually made people are realize that Jordan deserved DPOY in 1987 too.. He should have b2b DPOY's in 87' and 88'.. That's what this analysis has uncovered.

Inflated stats for mj would only matter if only mj had inflated stats in those years right ?
It’s a relative game anyway .
If all players had some inflated stats it doesn’t really matter .
Mj deserve better then what he had in 1987 .
Especially when u compare to Robertson .
I think it’s clear dpoy or mvp isn’t base on just stats .
The narrative changes every years .
Doesn’t mean with lesser stats mj wouldn’t be voted dpoy anyway .

1987 #2 in steal , #16 in blks -> 8th dpoy , no DEF team ?
1988 #1 in steal ,#14 in blks -> 1st dpoy , DEF 1 .
Something doesn’t add up …

I don’t even understand why magic won mvp in 1987 over Mike by such a wide gap .
Mj had a worst team , more responsibility, played more games , more minutes , did better defensively, better offensively, etc.
Seem it isn’t just about stats shrug .

imagine the energy it takes to average 37 and also goat levels of "stocks"

Since DPOY awards were so heavily influenced by this “stock” statistic, Michael Cooper must have had a ton the year he won it.

mullen:

Also, mullen:

Yet here we have a passage from the article that mullen "fully read":

Yes mullen. Jordan definitely paid the statkeepers to give him fake stats. Him having a lot of steals is basically proof. Jesus Christ.

Ah, I thought this was going to be your evidence. Please quote the passages from your article that state Bob Rosenberg did not have a crew working with him when he was working as lead statkeeper for the Bulls. Or, if he did have a crew, what were a) their names, and b) years of experience for the games in question.

This should be easy since you also have evidence that Jordan paid them off. You know, from the article. That you read. Fully.

Has anyone posted links to the fraudulent games in question yet? I have not had time to fully catch up on the thread but I'm sure they have been posted multiple times by now. It would be interesting viewing, and critical, so that we're all working from the same set of premises. I'm glad that so many people in this thread were able to find proof so easily.

And anyways, although I'm sure these games are great viewing, because you've definitely watched them multiple times by now to ensure these subjective stats were counted accurately this time -- can we all agree that this doesn't impact Jordan's legacy at all, except for people ranking him by steal + block totals? (I honest to god didn't even realize he led the league in steals in 1987-88, so this whole thing is hilarious in my opinion. Anyone that has played basketball before knows that defense is far more than steals and blocks.)

yeah we all for sure have to watch those games multiple times to speak on this matter.

it impacts Jordans legacy only in the sense it calls into question his dpoy season. also efficiency stats like PER get thrown around a lot for cross generational comparisons and steals/blocks flow through there. jordans highest season PER was '87-88.

this article isn't some massive scandal. it doesn't call into question whether mj was great at defense or basketball. it notes a funny convention that used to happen, influenced star player stats, and is largely phased out.

per usual, debate ensues when fallguy mischaracterizes and hand waves everything in the article away.

Evidence presented in article:
-Interview with scorekeeper from that era who says that is how it was and was expected, referencing quotes from other scorekeepera
-Games with more steals than opponent turnovers
-Two separate reviewers watch sample of '88 home games with outsized MJ steal stats and independently arrive at same, much-lower-than official number
-MJ had unprecedented home split differentials across the season that have never been duplicated

Fallguy evidence against scorekeeper influence:
-Other guys from that era had inflated home stats
-Fans energized players then, are nicer to road teams now
-Road trips were harder, teams flew coach back then
-Watching 5 games is a small sample

No because everyone's numbers were much higher at home back then, so the inflation happened to everyone - see Hakeem's massive home inflation from 1990 below, or Alvin Robertson's posted on the previous page.

1990 Hakeem

HOME...... 233 blocks... 103 steals... 131 assists
ROAD....... 143 blocks..... 71 steals... 102 assists

And we know that Alvin Robertson;s DPOY in 1986 saw him average 4.4 steals at home and 2.9 on the road (1.5 gap), which is similar to Jordan's 4.0 and 2.3 (1.7 gap) in 1988.

So it's clearly harder to play on the road in previous eras due to less days off and more back-to-backs - if you guys ever played sports, you would understand the amazing value of a day off and this alone accounts for the difference, even without considering other factors that made road trips tougher like flying coach instead of private jet, and hostile crowds (today's player boot unruly fans)

So easier road environments is why the home inflation is less in today's game - the NBA has largely normalized the transition from home to road, whereas road trips in previous eras were grueling ordeals that saw everyone's numbers crater.. Bad record-keeping had nothing to do with it and a 5-game sample where the guy didn't show his work certainly isn't a sufficient sample size to confirm bad record-keeping.




If you don't believe the PER or WS numbers anymore, than OBPM (the offensive side of BPM) is the best stat to use and here are the career results:

Career Offensive Box Plus-Minus (OBPM)

1. Jordan........ 8.81
2. Jokic........... 8.18
3. Lebron...... 7.50

So Jordan still rules by a mile... You can't make this stuff up.

But the reality is that the PER and WS numbers are still legit because we know that the home inflation of previous eras occurred for all players, and it was due to the grueling ordeal that road trips were back then.. Accordingly, the road stats of previous eras should be adjusted upwards to account for the grueling ordeal that they were back then compared to the smoother transition between home and road that today's game provides (more days off, less back-to-backs, private jets, friendly crowds, modern amenities and concerted efforts to make road trips easy for players).




The scorekeeper wasn't from the 80's and wasn't from the Bulls... He was from 1995 and from the Vancouver Grizzlies... He said that Stockton's stats were padded... whooptiwhoop... this has nothing to do with jordan.

And there were no games with more steals than turnovers - it was more steals than live-ball turnovers, so there's some shenanigans going on there and some subjectivity involved - again, there's no reason to believe the new subjective ruling is any better than the original subjective ruling, so subjective stats like steals, blocks, assists and rebounds are set in stone - there's no effective review of them.

And the 5 game sample review by 2 people that didn't show their work - gtfo... complete garbage.. It was designed to show that the Jordan's higher home inflation than the other DPOY's on the list was due to bad record-keeping and not MJ simply being a unique DPOY (the goat scorer and elite in both steals and blocks)... Guys that are high in blocks have home inflation of blocks, while guys with high steals have inflation of steals, but MJ was high in both - so his overall "stocks" inflation was higher than the normal DPOY from the list.. The other DPOY's were only high in one category, so they only had inflation in that one category.. So this accounts for MJ's higher home inflation and this is why the 5-game sample was allegedly provided, so the inflation could be blamed on bad record-keeping instead of MJ being a unique DPOY.
.

I see the LeBron fans are juicing the difference to 200%.

Excellent work.

It doesn't surprise me that you have no idea what I referring to with this post and that you made the exact same mistake again a few posts later. Nothing in this reply is even close to being relevant to what I was getting at about you not understanding percentages.

Hint: this statement is just completely wrong from a purely mathematical perspective when we're talking about percentage increases.

The fact that he has high numbers in both stats makes zero difference when looking at percentage increases but you've implied that it does multiple times now.

Also on the other thing you seem to not understand at all:

There being more steals than live-ball turnovers literally cannot just be the result of with subjective rulings, it's straight up impossible with accurate record keeping. If someone is getting a steal on a shot clock violation that isn't a subjective ruling, it's objectively wrong. Who benefits the most from the bogus stats might be subjective but it's concrete fact that there was objectively incorrect record keeping going on when there are more steals than live-ball turnovers.

One of the major points of the article is the inflation of these subjective stats during the era. Despite the home/away split gap decreasing somewhat after, it’s still quite likely MJ was getting extra steals and blocks awarded due to the circumstances of that era.

What kind of logic is that, lol? The article only mentions Rosenberg is the scorekeeper of the Bulls and Jordan was close to him. There are references to him signaling MJ during the game. What kind of logic is it to prove a negative? Can you quote the passages in the article that state that Matt R. is capable of critical thinking? No? Wow, you must be incapable of it!

Im confused as to what your position would be. For all the games Haberstroh and his partner found, your conclusion is that it’s possible that for those games, Rosenberg deferred to his unmentioned rookie crew? I mean, lol. Obviously it’s possible but the odds of that would be extremely small. Why would you use it as a baseline case?

I’ve stated that Haberstroh posted it on his substack, paywalled. I know you don’t read posts and seem to be unable to search for things too, so here’s a link.

https://www.tomthefinder.com/p/exclu...s-questionable

Here’s a screenshot of the post:



I haven’t paid for this or viewed it. I really don’t desire to as there is little reason to doubt his findings.

I gift you his substack for a monthly fee of $7 if you agree to donate $100 to the LeBron James Family Foundation once the 10 turnovers posted above do not feature 4 clear MJ steals. It’s very obvious they will not so I don’t see why this would be necessary. The author would never have written the article if the turnovers and steals added up.

Aye caramba

Explain how Tom's subjective interpretation of MJ's steals are more accurate than the original subjective interpretation?

It's fraud what they're doing

We're supposed to base everything off the 5-game sample right??.. Well his sample allegedly found 16 fake steals (of 28 recorded steals), which means that MJ should've averaged 1.4 steals on the year, which is absurd.. That's I'm amazed that a 5-game sample saw the light of day.

It's sheer fraud... Jordan's slightly higher bounce than other DPOY's is explained any number of ways, such as him being an extremely unique DPOY in a great many ways... Bad record keeping should be the last and least likely reason, and a 5-game sample of some non-player's and non-ref's interpretation should be laughed at..

There's no reason to trust Tom's subjective interpretation more than the original.. Heck, Tom is more biased - anyone can question the stats of a player by taking the most negative interpretation of each subjective stat - i.e. anyone could reduce Lebron's assists by taking the most negative interpretation of each "assist".
.

"We watched the game and put together a reel of 10 turnovers..."

Why do we have to trust something that these amateurs put together?

Why not just post the games?

And the way he said it - "a reel of 10 turnovers"... A reel? Sounds cherry-picked.

Or why even think you can interpret steals better than official scorekeepers?.. I posted one of the steals earlier - it was a Jordan steal.. this is pure fraud - it's stunningly obvious and yet people are either playing dumb or are dumb.

Boxscores don't differentiate between live-ball turnovers and otherwise, so I don't even know how they got the official number of live-ball turnovers for each game.

And again, if we're supposed to base the entire season on this alleged sample, then we should assume that MJ's true steals average is 1.4 for 1988... This is why I'm amazed that an alleged 5-game sample is being taken so seriously.. The sample itself (with more than half the recorded steals being alleged as fake) shows that MJ averaged 1.4 steals in 1988, so the sample is completely bogus

The reason for the reel of 10 turnovers is because there were 10 turnovers in the game. Thus every turnover is posted.

Most normal people have jobs and families and can’t waste time trying to dig up old game footage that is impossible to find and then painstakingly watch every possession and manually track everything for zero financial benefit. Thankfully there are people whose job it is to do that and we can read their work.

A normal person who is an MJ GOAT guy would be like “Wow, some serious problems here with scorekeeping and MJ’s DPOY and stats around that time certainly were inflated. But even removing the DPOY off his resume and lowering his stocks per game for his career by a few tenths, he’s still the GOAT”

Sadly some flat earth level MJ truthers itt who cannot accept reality despite overwhelming evidence.

Yes it does because of historical trends.

Historically, guys that block a lot of shots have high inflation of home blocks like Eaton or Jaren Jackson.

Otoh, guys that don't block a lot of shots don't have high inflation at home.

Similarly, guys that steal a lot have high inflation of home steals like Alvin Robertson or Hakeem.

In MJ's case, he's high in both steals and blocks, so he has high inflation in both, hence the slightly higher "stocks" bounce than others on the article's list..

Hakeem in 1990 was like MJ because he had slightly higher stocks inflation than the norm due to high levels in both steals and blocks.

So the 5-game sample is designed to show that MJ's higher inflation is due to bad record-keeping and not the many other reasons that it could be.. Hstorical trends show that his higher inflation is due to him being an extremely unique DPOY (high levels in steals & blocks).. I'm sure being the goat scorer and a far better scorer than any other DPOY also plays into it somehow.. MJ was a different type of DPOY, so his stats are different

Hope that helps bud

Why would anyone trust Tom's subjective judgement over the subjective judgement of the original professional record-keepers?

Subjective stats cannot be reviewed because the new judgement is subjective too.. So this is completely bogus

But the most bogus part is the sample size - in the history of the world, there's never been a study with a sample size of 5 that was taken seriously and wasn't laughed out of the room..

The only reason it's been taken seriously is because FS1 picked up the story - they picked it up because many of their guys are affiliated with Klutch and/or are represented by them.. It's literal fraud right in front of our eyes.. I suppose that I should write a letter to my old college stats professor and say "see you were wrong - a sample of 5 is totally sufficient".

Of course, the 5-game sample showed that 16 of 28 steals were fake (more than half), so that means MJ averaged 1.4 steals in 1988... Lol... Carry on

It wasn’t just Tom - a scorekeeper he worked with independently scored the games as well.

Another guy who specializes in grading by hand historical games had weighed in as well. It looks like his findings were very similar and with more detail as well.

https://x.com/squared2020/status/180...hpEUBDKuNPKjxA

Is this guy a klutch stooge too?

It's okay because I've officially solved the fraud:

It turns out that road records were MUCH MUCH MUCH worse in the 80's than now - 2 teams were above .500 on the road in 1988 compared to half the league today (15 teams).

This accounts for the inflation of home performance vs road that was widespread in the 80's and 90's but is mostly phased out today.

GONE are the days of road trips with 8 games in 13 nights... Between the extra days off, private jets, friendly crowds and much more, the NBA has normalized the transition from home to road - they've made road trips a luxury vacation compared to the grueling camping trips that road games used to be.

Finally, the 5-game sample was to show that the home inflation was from bad record keeping instead of other reasons like the road being a much tougher experience in prior eras, or other factors - the 5-game sample is meant to say it's cheating and let's take Jordan's awards away..

But sorry, we now know that the reason Hakeem's stocks were nearly 100% higher in 1990 was because road games were like the Hunger Games, not bad record keeping

Amazing how all of that home energy and horrible road play didn’t help Scottie Pippen much. In the first 6 years of Pippen’s career COMBINED (1988-1993), he had a whopping 34 more steals at home than on the road.

MJ had 71 more steals at home than on the road during his 1988 season alone (lol), and 188 more steals at home than the road during that 6 year period.