Data Reveals Bulls Might Have Padded Michael Jordan’s Stats During DPOY Season

Michael Jordan won his first and only Defensive Player of the Year award during the 1987-88 NBA season, edging out Mark Eaton and Hakeem Olajuwon to take home the hardware.

Jordan, in his third season, became the first player in NBA history to win the Defensive Player of the Year award while leading the league in scoring (35.0 points per game). No player has done it since.

Yahoo Sports analyst Tom Haberstroh recently looked into data and found that Jordan’s defensive averages that season—a career-high 3.2 steals and 1.6 blocks per game—could have been skewed by receiving favorable treatment from the Chicago Bulls‘ official scorekeeper during home games.

As Haberstroh noted, Jordan logged 165 steals in 41 games at home compared to 94 steals in 41 games on the road that season. He averaged 5.5 “stocks” (steals and blocks) per 36 minutes at home and just 3.02 stocks per 36 minutes on the road.

Jordan’s 182% increase in stocks at home in 1987-88 is the biggest split difference for any Defensive Player of the Year winner in NBA history, sitting comfortable ahead of the 1988-89 winner Eaton (159%) and the 1985-86 winner Alvin Robertson (153%) in second and third place.

While Bob Rosenberg, the Bulls’ official scorekeeper from 1965 to ’23, has never admitted to padding stats, there is precedent for others doing so in the 1980s and ’90s. Alex Rucker, a former statkeeper for the Vancouver Grizzlies, told the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast that he and other scorekeepers in the 1990s purposely padded stats for their players during home games.

Haberstroh pointed out a few more oddities from Jordan’s 1987-88 season. Nine of Jordan’s 10 games with at least four blocks that season happened at Chicago Stadium. He also watched back six games from that campaign and found the box scores from those contests displayed 59 Bulls steals when their opponents committed just 41 live-ball turnovers, indicating there perhaps was a bit of stat-padding occurring at home.

Even if there was a bit of juicing stats going on, Jordan’s Defensive Player of the Year trophy will remain in his possession. The NBA does not plan to verify Jordan’s stats from the 1987-88 campaign.