Is Michael Jordan’s DPOTY award from the 1987-88 NBA season legitimate?
While most regard ‘His Airness’ as the greatest player in NBA history, could it be that some of his career stats were embellished? Let’s take a closer look.
At the end of the 1987-88 NBA season, Michael Jordan became the only player in the NBA’s record books to win the Defensive Player of the Year award, while leading the league in scoring. It was his only DPOTY and one that has seemingly become the subject of a curious debate.
Were Michael Jordan’s defensive stats padded?
An interesting report surfaced this week, with Yahoo Sports indicating that Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan may have had his defensive averages during the 1987-88 season altered to give a more favorable standing. As mentioned above, that was the season that Jordan won the Defensive Player of the Year award on the back of a career-high 3.2 steals and 1.6 blocks per game, to go with a league-leading 35 points per game. No player has managed to do both in the same season, before or since.
According to the report, the Bulls’ official scorekeeper during home games could be at fault as there appears to be a wide disparity between what he registered when playing in Chicago vs elsewhere i.e., he notched 165 steals in 41 games at home compared with 94 steals in 41 games on the road that season. Going further, Jordan averaged 5.5 “stocks” (steals and blocks) per 36 minutes at home and just 3.02 stocks per 36 minutes on the road. If you’re wondering, that represents a 182% increase when playing at home which stands as the single biggest split difference for any DPOTY winner in the history of the NBA. At 159%, the winner in the 1988-89 season, Mark Eaton, can’t compare.
Now, this is not to say that the Bulls’ official scorekeeper, Bob Rosenberg, is guilty of some wrongdoing and he certainly hasn’t admitted to any. On the other hand, having served in his role from 1965 to 2023, Rosenberg definitely passed through a period - the 1980s and ‘90s - when such practices were observed. Indeed, we do know that Alex Rucker, a former statkeeper for the Vancouver Grizzlies admitted that he and other scorekeepers in the 1990s purposely padded stats for their players during home games.
Incidentally, the ‘evidence’ doesn’t end there either. It was also found that nine of Jordan’s 10 games with at least four blocks during that campaign were played at Chicago Stadium. Additionally, there were box scores taken from six games in which the Bulls were recorded as having 59 steals, when in actuality opposing teams had a total of 41 live-ball turnovers, begging the question, ‘How?” Ultimately, this will have little effect on Jordan’s legacy and it’s not like he’s about to lose his trophy, but one has to wonder, ‘Did Michael Jordan really get help?’