LeBron > Jordan GOAT Super AIDS Containment, solved #22999 post by Matt R. (addendum #23174)

Further proof MJ makes his teammates better.

A excellently researched article proving and demonstrating that MJ’s defensive stats (as well as other players from the era) were extremely inflated and in many cases, outright fraud and made up.

https://sports.yahoo.com/a-closer-look-a...

One of the most damning passages:

The Bulls having 10 steals on 10 Hawks turnovers meant that none of the Hawks turnovers could have been dead-ball turnovers. No travels. No offensive fouls. No ball tossed out of bounds. No 24-second violations. For an entire game. Could it be?

And then we watched the film — independently, as to avoid influencing one another’s findings. We compared notes. Turns out, we both saw the same troubling series of plays.

A 24-second violation by the Hawks’ offense. Later, Atlanta reserve Chris Washburn dribbled off his foot out of bounds. An outlet pass to Dominique Wilkins bounces off his hands and into the scorer’s table. Three dead-ball turnovers — three plays that could not have been considered a steal opportunity. And, yet, the box score indicated zero such plays.

It also meant an opportunity to hand out three excess steals to Bulls players.

We compared notes again. We both saw only two legitimate steals by Michael Jordan. The box score credited him with five. An excess of three steals. (To be precise, we saw two Jordan steals, at best, but possibly only one — when he poked the ball, chased it down and saved it from going out of bounds before throwing it directly to the Hawks for a turnover. The other play — a transition deflection by Jordan’s teammate Mike Brown that was recovered by Jordan — could have gone either way.) There were three steals unaccounted for.

The incongruent turnover/steal columns presented a glaring red flag. In the other five games we watched, the live-ball turnovers and steals did not add up, either. In the Detroit game, eight Chicago steals on six Detroit live-ball turnovers. In the Denver game, 13 Chicago steals on just seven Denver live-ball turnovers. Again and again, the official steal counts were routinely outpacing the possible number of steal opportunities. Something was amiss.

All in all, by our count, the box score showed 59 steals on 41 live-ball turnovers, resulting in a whopping 18 excess steals.

Who benefited from all those extra steals? We brought our attention to Jordan’s accounting. In the six games, the box scores indicated that Jordan’s total steal count was 28. After comparing our notes from the film study, we each counted 12 steals. An astounding difference of 16 excess steals. Almost every excess steal was being allocated to Jordan.

Yeah good piece of journalism

[emoji1787]

Really?

It lists a bunch of low-scoring DPOY's that average between 7 to 18 ppg........... Then it shows a DPOY that was actually the goat scorer and averaged twice as much (35 ppg), but pretends that he shouldn't be an outlier from the other DPOY's, or acts surprised that he is.

The article concedes that even low-scoring DPOY's like Ben Wallace and Jaren Jackson Jr benefitted from home environment even though they didn't have the massive 2-way burden and therefore didn't need the energy or the crowd like Jordan did.. Jordan was like Muhamad Ali and had a different relationship with the crowd than a grinder like Alvin Robertson or Ben Wallace - Jordan relied on the crowd to help carry the goat burden but this boost wasn't there on the road.. In addition to the crowd being a bigger factor for Jordan, the Bulls were a developing team in 1988 and the gap in home/road performance was bigger than anyone else on the list.

Essentially, Jordan was not an ordinary DPOY because he's the goat scorer and most DPOY's are low-scoring grinders.. Even Hakeem only averaged 27 ppg as DPOY, which is 8 less than MJ.. The young Bulls also had bigger gaps in performance (home vs road) than anyone in on the list.

Articles like this show how much Jordan is goat because it's clear that people are just mad that Lebron fell short - now that it's over, they're desperate as they enter the denial phase.. It's amusing

Yeah because if MJ only averaged 2.8 steals per game and 1.2 blocks that year, that would have been terrible.

#bum

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23' Jaren Jackson.......... 18.6 ppg..... 150% more home stocks
88' Michael Jordan....... 35.0 ppg..... 182% more home stocks

^^^^ Jordan carried the goat 2-way burden and therefore needed goat energy, so he benefitted from the home crowd energy more than anyone.. On the road, he saved energy by gambling less and getting less steals... Makes sense to anyone that hooped.. The blocks remained similar on the home/road - it was only the steals and only that one year where MJ's defensive energy much higher than any other year in his effort to win DPOY... So the article is complete BS - everything is explained easily and they're pretending there's an issue.

Jaren Jackson's stocks increased 150% at home and so did many others, so what difference does it make that Jordan's increased 182%?... Why is that worthy of an article and taking Jordan's DPOY away?

Jackson and other DPOY's were low-scorers, while Jordan as the goat scorer - you don't think that this easily accounts for the difference, among any number of other factors?... It's a completely bs article and it goes along with the "done with the 90's" and "can't go left" propaganda - it's the same thing.

Jordan carried the goat 2-way burden and therefore needed goat energy, so he benefitted from the home crowd energy more than anyone.. He offset the home crowd boost on the road by gambling less and getting less steals... It makes sense to anyone that hooped - or it could be any number of other reasons why a singularly unique player like MJ would have different numbers from the stick-men bigs or inferior vastly guards that won the award in other years.

Btw, the blocks remained similar on the home/road - it was only the steals that fluctuated and only that one year where MJ's defensive energy was much higher than any other year in his effort to win DPOY... So the article is complete BS - everything is explained easily and they're pretending there's an issue.

btw, the author says they watched 5 games and that's the sample size, which shows that "Thinking Basketball's youtube videos where they claim to have watched over 100 Jordan playoff games to track his advanced stats (and then proceeds to trash him) are complete bs

Imagine a bum that can't play well enough to be GOAT so he gets the media to **** on the real GOAT with lies and made up BS.. It makes you realize that most of history has been misreported, mischaracterized, or otherwise mis-something'd by insecure and low-character people

crickets as another lebron propaganda bites the dust just like "done with the 90's" and "can't go left"

Interesting article.

Can someone link the games in question where the steal+block totals were most egregiously incorrect?

Are the home/away splits about equal for every other player?

Actually, in skimming parts of that article again he explicitly talks about home juicing (whether deliberate or just home fan bias) happening in multiple other cases. Nick Van Exel assists, Shaq blocks, raptors block record, etc.

It’s…. interesting that he somehow turns this into a Jordan vs LeBron thing. And that title. “Has LeBron James been chasing a ghost?”…. Since when has LeBron James been chasing Michael Jordan’s ‘87-‘88 steal+block total?

Jordan definitely higher at home for steals and blocks. Checked the other steal leaders from the same year and it seems consistent that the steal/block stats were up when at home. So, he's still likely ahead and winning DPOTY either way.

I’m surprised this is how you’re choosing to go on this one tbh. “Stats were up when at home”, but not to the tune of nearly double.

Turns out the one simple trick on the LBJ / MJ debate is to go back and actually watch MJ’s games in full. The legend is bigger than the tape…which is really why eras shouldn’t be compared.

Can you please give the name, or cite the source (website, article, book, whatever), of one single person who has stated Jordan’s “legend” is due to his steals+blocks total from the 1987-88 season?

Once you do that we can discuss if his inflated home steals+blocks stats are within normal ranges of variance of the extremely common phenomena of home stats being inflated.

I've never understood why in pro sports the home team and not the league is in charge of scoring. We wouldn't let them pick referees and umpires. In the second half of his career Derek Jeter could hit a routine ground ball through a fielders legs in Yankee Stadium and it would be called a hit.
And there's way more wiggle room in basketball for fake stats than in baseball.

I'm not sure if it's still the case but I remember in the NBA the home team was also in charge of the clock. The last play of the Spurs Knicks finals in 1999 is really hilarious. The Knicks were down by 1 or 2 with less than 2 seconds left and the clock didn't start for probably a full second once Spreewell got the ball..

Agree 100%. Makes no sense to have the home team in charge of clock and keeping stats.

Careful bringing up Derek Jeter though, you’re gonna get LeBron fans to put in months of research to discredit his hit totals to ensure he’s ahead on the GOAT athlete list. Just kidding (or am I?).

IMO, someone needs to create an AI bot that mines Michael Jordan data for errors and inconsistencies, and creates chatbot generated talking points and posts it to yahoo sports. Call it BronNet.

Maybe one day it will become sentient and assimilate mullen and LuckyLloyd. Kind of like the Borg. Their first model can be the T-NBA2k-800. Modeled after Arnold Schwarzenephew.

Yeah good luck with that.. They supposedly watched a grand total of 5 games and then tried to describe the possessions of 1 game in particular from February 15, 1988 vs Hawks... The fact that it was so painstaking for them to watch 5 games is further evidence that channels like Thinking Basketball that purport to watch hundreds of MJ games and have detailed possession data are complete bs.. Then there's the "done with the 90's" and 'can't go left" campaigns... All of this is a Klutch Sports-fueled effort to make the biggest loser in NBA history perceived as the greatest player of all-time.

The 88' Bulls were 20-21 on the road and 32-9 at home - that's the biggest disparity in home/road of anyone on the DPOY list from the article, except for Ron Artest, who had the exact same road/home records.

So I think ultimate issue is that there could be any number of reasons for a player as abnormal as Jordan to have abnormal levels in any stat, let alone a stat as obscure as the difference in home stocks vs road stocks.. Accordingly, try this on for size:

4 steals per game for the goat demon like MJ isn't surprising in peak Chicago Stadium during the 1 year that MJ was going for DPOY - he had maximum energy management requirements that year, so it would make sense to offset the lack of crowd boost on the road by gambling less and getting less steals.. But at home, he could go crazy and let the crowd carry him..

Again, any number of reasons - this could be one of them, so it's a meaningless article that has a bunch of words but nothing concrete... Now if they would post the links to the games and question and be so kind as to time stamp the botched steals, then that would be a start.. Otherwise, lol

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Here's Haberstroh telling Broussard about the key play that he found horrific and galvanized him - apparently, the Bulls' center Mike Brown made a deflection along with MJ, and MJ came up with the ball - it angered Haberstroh that MJ was credited with a steal, although we don't even know if he was - here's Haberstroh complaining about the play on Chris Broussard's show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh7M5z_c...

And here's the actual play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-Q4u-5...

As you can see, Mike Brown tips the ball along with MJ, and MJ comes up with it - we don't know if this was recorded as a steal for MJ but it certainly could've been.. This is standard, but Haberstroh considers this egregious.. This is the kind of crap that is being used to take MJ down.

Haberstroh works for Klutch and never denied this in the interview with Broussard - when he was accused of working with Klutch by Broussard's sidekick (Ephram), he didn't deny it and instead deflected.. Then Broussard actually admitted that he's represented by Klutch - this stuff is AMAZING... TLDR: don't believe the stuff in your history books kids
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Jordan's 10-steal game only has highlights and they show 7 steals - Haberstroh uses this to claim that MJ didn't get 10 steals in that game... How do we know that the other 3 steals simply weren't included in the highlight clip?... Why assume there was a mistake?...

And the only other specific example given was the game against the Hawks.... So similar to the "can't go left" or "done with the 90's" frauds, this fraud is based on 2 examples and claims the entire season can be discredited based on these one-offs.

Why not look at OTHER obvious games where MJ had big steals numbers like 8 and 7 steals to see if they're legit??... Why only cite those 2 games?... It's because it's fraud - they found 1 or 2 games where might be off and that's all they needed for this fraud to claim this was the standard.

Who's checking their work - no one... Who's reporting on their work - Klutch minions like Broussard.. It's amazing this stuff happens.. Carry on.. Even if we reduce his 182% stocks number to 150% like Jaren Jackson, MJ would still have goat stocks in that season and win DPOY.. The 182 number is normal variance above the 130-150 norm for other DPOY's and this probably has something to do with MJ being the goat scorer, while the other DPOY's were just defenders or under 20 ppg

From the article:

For years, Jordan’s Defensive Player of the Year award has stood as an unassailable pillar in the GOAT argument. In May 2023, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith published a video on the MJ vs. LeBron debate from his YouTube show arguing Jordan’s case, concluding:

“Did you know that Michael Jordan is the former Defensive Player of the Year in 1988? LeBron James has never won a Defensive Player of the Year. We’re talking about what you do on both ends of the court. And we’re talking about Michael Jordan as the greatest.”

Smith isn’t alone. Last year on ESPN, Jalen Rose held up Jordan’s DPOY as a primary reason he sides with the Chicago Bull over LeBron as well.

“When you talk about GOAT, the first word is greatest — and that means achieved more than somebody else,” Rose said. “And if we’re comparing Michael Jordan and LeBron — for example — Michael Jordan got 10 scoring titles; LeBron has one. Michael Jordan has been Defensive Player of the Year in the NBA; LeBron hasn’t.”

So we have young NBA fans watching actual MJ tape on tik tok and being…underwhelmed. Now we have journalists checking tape from his DPOY and proving it is a fugazi. It is what it is - his greatness is to some extent myth that lives in people’s hearts and memories. The point of discussion is how much of it is myth, how much is real. But pretending it isn’t a reality that the legend is larger than what actually happened is…weird?

Meanwhile LeBron has been endlessly poured over and replayed in a different era of scrutiny and footage accessibility.