InflateGate: a Pablo Torre Finds Out 🤝 The Finder collab
Go watch/listen to the craziest story I've ever worked on, the widespread inflation of 80s/90s NBA stats and the scorekeeper who uncovered it.
I’ve done a bunch of collabs with Pablo Torre.
We co-wrote an ESPN the Mag feature on the NBA’s new foray into biometric and blood testing.
We have taken the stage in front of live audiences at Mas Miami last year and Count the Dings in Brooklyn back in the day. (I wasn’t there, sadly, for the Pablo crowd surf of 2018).
We appeared on ESPN channels together. When I announced I was leaving ESPN in 2017, I chose to share a photo of me and Pablo on the ESPN SideCast set because it was maybe my happiest moment at the company. In a backroom studio/closet at ESPN’s downtown LA offices, Pablo, the TrueHoopTV crew and I successfully FaceTimed with Stephen Jackson live on air, on Pablo’s MacBook, during the playoffs as the former NBA player was on a leisure walk outside. This was, in my estimation, ESPN NBA television at its zenith.
Look how happy we were!
I say all that because …
Tuesday’s collab with Pablo ranks as my favorite collab of them all. The Finder meets Pablo Torre Finds Out! Our finding powers combined!
Do you remember that Jaren Jackson Jr/Reddit fake stat scandal false alarm from last year? The allegation that a Grizzlies statkeeper was cooking the books for Jaren Jackson Jr’s DPOY campaign? Yeah, there was nothing there. A big ol’ nothingburger.
But it DID launch a personal mission to solve a mystery that had been eating away at me for over a decade.
There was a REAL fake stat scandal involving the Memphis Grizzlies that was uncovered back in 2009. Deadspin picked it up and published an interview with a former scorekeeper, only known as “Alex from the Navy,” who actually DID cook the books for the Grizzlies (and other random players) who played in Vancouver back in the late 1990s. He wasn’t a rogue scammer. No, this was bigger. Alex from the Navy was claiming that he was only FOLLOWING the NBA-wide workplace culture of scorekeepers who juiced the stats for the hometown team. He wasn’t the only one, he says — he was the only one willing to admit it.
It caused quite a stir in the analytics community/APBRmetrics forum back in 2009. It was a bombshell of sorts. And then, after the smoke cleared, he — and the story — was gone.
Until now. Who was Alex from the Navy, the guy cooked the books in the late 90s? To me, this the big question I needed to answer. He was a real person, just chilling somewhere, on a Naval base or somewhere in a far off land!
What if I could find him? Would he talk openly now? What would he think about today’s NBA? What did he think of the Jaren Jackson thing? Are there stat scammers out there in 2024? Is Luka’s 73 and NBA scores routinely in the 130s and 140s, is this part of a larger scheme to juice fan interest? What would Alex say?
I needed to FIND this guy.
So after some digging, I found out his full name.
It turns out, I knew Alex. Like, knew him in real life. I’d met him and talked to him in the flesh. And there’s a chance, if you’re a Toronto Raptors or Philadelphia 76ers fan, you know Alex, too.
So I called him. And we talked about it all.
Give that a watch.
Or a listen.
There’s a lot in there that I hope you find interesting as much as I do. What I realized — er, found out! — is that this story isn’t really about Alex, it’s about marketing in the 80s and 90s and the role of sports statistics in drawing people’s attention. It’s also a lesson in why we should have, as Alex said in our interview, a healthy skepticism of data. In life, it’s good to have checks and balances. You’ll see why in this story.
What’d you think? Where would you like me to take the story next? I have my own thoughts, but want my Finders to help me go find the next one.
You dug deep and find gold! In retrospect this is so obvious when you laid this out.
Actually this reminds me of Finnish soccer league stat keeping that was and still one of the worst stat keeping ever. There where fantasy games in the early 2000s that I liked to play and noticed the stat keeping was inconsistent. My main takeaway from that era was that stat keepers usually recognizes the home team players much easier and they did not "cook" the books, but left out away team player stats like shots on goal and assist usually empty. This was a symptom of scorekeeper not recognize the player who made the shot or assist. It did not even matter how obvious the shot or assist was, just pure laziness and not caring about the stats.
Watched this morning and it was a fantastic. As a 42 year old who grew up in Portland with only one professional team the Blazers and NBA of the late 80s/90 were my passion so this was a very interesting lense to see my memories through.
Also, as many a YT commentor stated it made us yearn for Basketball Illuminati and a future return one day.