In June 2024, Yahoo writer Tom Haberstroh opened a can of worms by claiming that Michael Jordan’s home stats were inflated during the 1987-88 season. This was the same season when MJ won the Defensive Player of the Year award, which cast doubt among fans about the legibility of the honor.
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Gilbert Arenas also addressed the controversy in a conversation with DJ Vlad.
The controversy erupted when Haberstroh pointed out that during his DPOY season, Jordan’s home stats were almost twice better than his road stats. He clinched 2.1 steals and 1.2 blocks per game on the road while nabbing 4 steals and 2.1 blocks per game on the home floor.
Haberstroh posted a graph that proved this is the biggest home-away stats discrepancy for any DPOY in NBA history. But according to Arenas, this isn’t a big deal. He argued that it is a norm in the league for home stat-keepers to credit extra stats to their players.
He highlighted that while the number of points can’t be exaggerated; it is easy to manipulate the numbers related to assists, rebounds, steals, and blocks. There are times when a stat keeper can award an assist to the home athlete despite their teammate finishing the basket, much later after the pass was finished.
Agent Zero believes that it isn’t just Chicago Bulls stat keepers who engage in such practices. He posited that many Magic Johnson-related assists numbers also showed tremendous difference at home and away.
Thus, to say that only MJ benefitted from such bias would be unfair. As per the 3x NBA All-Star, every athlete receives the perks of extra stats when they played home games.
“What they’re arguing about Jordan, that is everybody you can think of. If you look at Magic Johnson’s assist record at home or assists home and versus road, gonna be different. Just like anybody in the NBA, it’s different.”
Arenas is spot-on about his observations. Sportswriter Bill Simmons once claimed that John Stockton got three to four extra assists credited to him from the home stats keeper every game. Apart from that, there are many times when one can easily pick many instances when a player is credited with an assist despite the pass receiver making a shot after various dribbles.
While Jordan may have received such stats-related advantages, he isn’t an anomaly. Apart from that, Jordan’s 1988 DPOY case wasn’t just limited to steals and blocks. He had the second-best defensive rating behind Hakeem Olajuwon.
His Box Plus +/- of 13 was head and shoulders above the rest. Thus, discrediting MJ’s DPOY award based on inflated steals and blocks can overlook various other factors.
