Michael Jordan's Defensive Player of the Year award called into question

According to Rucker, the scorekeepers told him in no uncertain terms that it was an assist because it was John Stockton. Rucker soon realized what was expected. In Rucker’s view, it was inferred that part of the scorekeeper’s job was to give hometown stars the star treatment. “I left there clearly understanding that, yes, we are supposed to present the most accurate representation that we can, but the NBA is also an entertainment business,” Rucker told me. “And it’s up to us, in very small part as statisticians, to support or reinforce stars and excitement and fun. And that message was definitely reinforced internally within the Grizzlies.” -via Yahoo! Sports / June 20, 2024

Breaking out his numbers into game location, we find that Jordan averaged a mind-boggling 4 steals and 2.1 blocks at home. But on the road, those numbers shrunk to a more normal rate of 2.1 steals and 1.2 blocks. Put simply, Jordan’s steals and blocks nearly doubled at home compared to the road. To account for possible uneven playing time effects, we can look at per-36-minute numbers for a truer portrayal of the phenomenon. Jordan’s combined block and steals numbers (“stocks”) were a whopping 82 percent higher at home (5.5 stocks per 36 minutes) than on the road (3.0). -via Yahoo! Sports / June 20, 2024

Dating back to 1982-83 when the award was established, Jordan’s home-vs.-away disparity in combined blocks and steals represents the largest of any Defensive Player of the Year award winner in NBA history. No other instance in the award’s history has a player shown a disparity that touched 160 percent — except for Jordan’s 1987-88 season, which clocked in at 182 percent. -via Yahoo! Sports / June 20, 2024