Was there anything fishy about Michael Jordan’s 1987-88 Defensive Player of the Year award?
Following my Yahoo Sports reported feature on the evidence of questionable statkeeping with Jordan’s steals and blocks, I talked to the man who helped find the tapes and review the film.
Reinis Lācis wears many hats. He’s a journalist, an executive with the European Youth Basketball League and an assistant GM for a Latvian Basketball League club. He’s also an old NBA video junkie who noticed that some stats weren’t adding up from the 80s and 90s. You might know him from his YouTube channel LamarMatic.
We embarked on a project to see if Jordan’s extraordinary steals and blocks numbers at home were legitimate.
We came away with some pretty alarming discoveries. Some topics:
How Reinis fell in love with the NBA
His work verifying some wild 80s and 90s statlines
Did Michael Jordan actually get all those steals and blocks?
What it says about the pre-Internet era of sports
The need for home bias adjustments in sports statistics
How this changes the GOAT discussion
