Michael Jordan’s 1988 DPOY might have been fraudulent

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The DPOY gave Jordan something that LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson never had: recognition for being the NBA’s best defender.

But a closer look at Jordan’s 1987-88 season reveals a substantial discrepancy between his home and road statistics, raising questions about the authenticity of his off-the-charts steals and blocks numbers that season — and shining a light on an era that seemed particularly vulnerable to the hidden hand of homer bias.

Considerable evidence — both statistical and corroborating video — suggests that Jordan’s Defensive Player of the Year award may not be as valid as we thought.


For almost four decades, Jordan’s lone DPOY has stood unquestioned. We took a deeper look after a recent discussion with a man named Alex Rucker, who pulled back the curtain on the complicated role of an NBA home statkeeper.

Rucker is currently the CEO of a Boys & Girls Club in Texas and was once a top executive for the Philadelphia 76ers in 2020. Before that, he was a former statkeeper for the Vancouver Grizzlies and was an employee during their inaugural season in 1995-96. In February, Rucker told me he was among a number of home scorekeepers in the 1990s who selectively juiced the numbers for their players. In our interview for "Pablo Torre Finds Out," Rucker explained that, in his view, inflating certain box-score statistics for the home team was a common league-wide practice.

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).

It isn’t unusual for the NBA’s top defender to exhibit a slight home/road disparity. It’s common knowledge that players perform better at home in front of friendly confines (as Jackson showed last season).

But the size of Jordan’s 1987-88 gap is unprecedented.

A pattern emerged as the games began to pile up in our film review. It appeared that Jordan benefited from deflections being erroneously recorded as steals. In games where there was a surplus of Jordan steals, we noticed that the turnover/steal counts would closer align after we counted the defensive plays that Jordan poked the ball out of bounds or back into the hands of the opposing team — even if there was no change of possession.

Steals should not be awarded in these instances, but Jordan seemed to benefit from the apparent generosity. And here’s the thing: when other players made the same deflections on both teams, their steal counts tended to be scored by the book — that is, correctly. Twelve steals in six games for Jordan (two steals per game) would be much more in line with his road average that season (2.3) rather than his official home average of four steals.

In the block category, it seemed that Jordan also benefited from some exceptional statkeeping. For instance, whenever Chicago Bulls forward Horace Grant blocked a shot but was whistled for the foul, he was, correctly, not credited with a block. But when Jordan did the same, his box score line tended to show excess blocks.

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