How good was Michael Jordan, really?

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0:39Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now.

0:52One of the things that always blows my mind, no matter how many times I think about it, is that I've never really touched anything. Like, I can feel my chair. It feels solid. I'm sitting on it right now. But no part of me is actually touching it. I'm just feeling the electromagnetic force between my atoms and the ones in the chair. I'm kind of hovering. We're all hovering. All the time. This kind of thing tends to happen a lot. The closer you look, things get sort of wiggly. Even simple questions. Things I've taken for granted my whole life. Like this great one I came across recently. Exactly how good was Michael Jordan?

1:42You know, the basketball goat. How good was he at actually playing basketball? So the way any normal basketball fan would try to answer this question is by going to the stats, right? You look up any given game, you'll see how many points he had, how many blocks, how many assists. But then you start asking yourself, how do they know how many he had? Well, the answer is that an official in the stadium entered those things into a database. And like, okay, points are easy. You know, you put in one point for a free throw, two points for a layup, three points for a three-pointer. Simple. But everything else, blocks, assists, they're kind of judgment calls.

2:29Those numbers that get etched into basketball history as records that fans end up viewing as somewhere between objective truth and almost scripture. A lot of those numbers are just something we assume happened. Like my butt assumes it's touching my chair. I started thinking about this after I listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Pablo Torre Finds Out, where they pulled on this thread of NBA stats and they sort of ended up unraveling the whole sweater. So we wanted to share it with you. As they say in the episode, in a very unexplainable way, the deeper we go in NBA history, it feels like the more we don't know.

3:13Okay, here's Pablo.

3:20Tom Haverstrow, it is a pleasure to have you in the flesh at this desk with Revelations to present to me. Happy to be here, Pablo. You being a protagonist of this story matters because this story begins really, in my life at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which we just call Sloan. Yeah. As if people know what that is typically. It's very embarrassing when you're at like a cocktail party or you're at an event and you're just like, yeah, I'm going to Sloan next weekend. Or I just got back from Sloan and people are like, what are you talking about? Right. In our defense, Sloan became a thing that got mentioned in season nine of The Office.

4:00Hey, so Wade wants to send people to the Sloan Conference? We got to compile a list of our target clients. already on it. But in reality, what this is is a giant nerd fest. Yeah. Where the celebrities there in the VIP room, which is very well guarded, by the way, those celebrities include people like you. Because, we'll get to the big names in sports, but like you made your career on numbers. Right? Forgive me for simplifying your life, but I have always considered you like basketball, analytics, expert Tom Haverstrow. I grew up loving basketball, playing basketball, baseball, football, and just loving the math side of the game.

4:43And then kind of broke into ESPN being a stats researcher. The biggest break I could ever imagine is at 25 years old, I'm going down to Miami to cover LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh in 2010 at a time when their analytics wasn't a word. So you were like putting these historical performances into statistical context as a matter of the beat that you were right. Like when Skip Bayless is saying, oh, LeBron doesn't have a clutch gene. I actually go into the data and I say, like, actually, here's what the data says. He's much more efficient than Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant and Ray Allen. And I was covering the team, the biggest team in sports with an analytical lens using statistics to tell stories.

5:26Right. And so when we go to Sloan, which is a thing that started at an MIT lecture hall, by the way, right, that has since bloomed, mutated into something that takes over like the largest convention centers in Boston, as it will this Friday, actually. What we're doing is going to a place where you, Tom Haberstroh, are something of a celebrity. And both of us have, you know, moderated panels at Sloan, which is what a brag. This is the panel I'm moderating because, as Charles Barkley put it, I couldn't get girls in high school. So thank you. Welcome to Basketball 100 panel. We're supposed to look into the future and tell everybody what it's going to look like in 25 years.

6:07So good luck with that. At a certain point, to be a kid in America who loves sports went from I want to be an athlete to I want to be a general manager. and this is like the power center where that stuff actually seems possible because you see the people who count as like heroes and idols to, yeah, to sports nerds. Yeah, well, there's Daryl Morey is the head of Dorkapalooza, which I think Bill Simmons coined, is that he is Dork Elvis of Dorkapalooza, which is the Sloan Conference. I'm not so sure how Daryl feels about that nickname. Eh, it fits. But he is the face of it. The guy who claimed famously that, empirically speaking, James Harden is a better scorer than Michael f***ing Jordan.

6:52If you looked at data at the time, once he had the ball in his hands, and it's still true to this day, and I get a lot of s*** because, you know, someone asked me who's a better scorer, him or Michael Jordan, and it's just factual that James Harden is a better scorer than Michael Jordan. Based on the math. Based on literally, like, you give James Harden the ball, and before you're giving up the ball, how many points do you generate, which is how you should measure offense. James Harden is by far number one. So obviously he's now running the Sixers. Yeah, running the Sixers. And then there's Alex Rucker, who is a stats nerd, who rose in the front office of the Toronto Raptors, who figured out like sport view data and camera tracking and how to arrange the defensive players optimally, and rose to become the executive VP of basketball operations for an NBA team.

7:40Now I used to kind of oversee analytics and the research and development, and the data scientists, the computer geeks, if you will. And so now I oversee all the departments within basketball operations. And then, of course, like there's, I mean, Mr. Moneyball himself. My God. And he's at Sloan. Yes, Billy Bean himself shows up. The game is really smart. In fact, I would say that baseball has become one of the most intelligent industries in the world, in my opinion. And you see it now with the use of analytics. The people running baseball teams are much different than when I started. And I think it's a compliment to the intelligence of the game.

8:14And so this conference now, as it's gotten more and more expensive and more exclusive and hard to get into, it's very clearly part business school, part Silicon Valley, big tech. And also, if we're being just very honest about ourselves and each other, it's also part, you know, Internet forum come to life. Yes. Internet forum come to life. The reason why we're sitting here today, Pablo, is because of an Internet forum back in 2009. It all starts here in the APBR Metrics Forum. Which I did not know about until you called me up. Like deeply excited to explain what this is. This is a meeting of the minds.

8:51It is the NBA Reddit before NBA Reddit existed. So I used to be in this forum all the time. Every day I would check in to kind of like see what's going to be happening in the future. Like it was a glimpse into this is where the industry is going. Yes. This is how to optimize the game. What's the most efficient way to score a basketball? Here's a study. Before Sloan, you guys were doing this on this message board. And then one night, Tuesday, July 14th, 2009, someone posted the headline, scorekeeper story with a bomb. The revelation in this, that a poster had heard from a friend, tell him a story about his experience as a stat keeper in the NBA.

9:37He's a stat keeper from 1997. The Vancouver Grizzlies, okay? This is peak Jordan era. I'm 11 years old. I'm reading this forum, and this scorekeeper is saying he was cooking the books for the Vancouver Grizzlies. I remember vividly, Pablo, sitting at my island kitchen table, watching SportsCenter, and Nick the Quick, Nick Van Exel. Yes. In the Laker game where he has like a zillion assists. 23 assists. and this guy, this is what he said. Because I'm a Laker fan, I gave Nick Van Exel like 23 assists one game. If he was vaguely close to a guy making a shot, I found a way to give him an assist. So immediately, I want to just start fact-checking this, right?

10:25So when you look at this game, when you go back into the archive, Tom, and you go and see this game now with fresh eyes, what does it actually look like? If you watch the film, the very first assist that Nick Van Exel has, it's not even on the screen. So the Vancouver Grizzlies just make a shot. Sharif Abdurrahim, the star young player, makes a shot. Eldon Campbell takes the ball out and passes it to Nick Van Exel ostensibly, but we don't actually see it on film because we cut away to Sharif Abdurrahim and then suddenly on the left side of the court, Eddie Jones is dribbling up and takes five dribbles on the left side and then pulls up for a pump fake three-pointer.

11:03way after the fact of maybe there was a Nick Van Exel phantom pass. We don't see it. It's not on the tape. When you look at the box score, I couldn't believe it, but the timestamp of that play is reflected in the box score, and it says Van Exel assists. That feels like an assist by neither the letter or the spirit of the law. Yeah, yeah. And so there were 23 of these. Now, to be fair, there were legit assists here in this game. The idea isn't that he didn't have a good game, Nick Van Axel. It's that it wasn't a 15-assist game. It was a 23-assist game. And the key is you're more interested in 23 assists.

11:43That's the only reason I remember it. So I remember this moment. And now I'm learning it's all a lie. So I should say, maybe this is obvious, this is an enormous problem for the integrity of, like, the NBA itself. And so where does the story go from here? It doesn't get contained in that internet forum. Tommy Craggs at Deadspin picks it up. This is Deadspin. We're talking about the peak of its powers. Craggs gets on the phone and talks to the stack keeper. But all I can think about is who is this guy? And in the story, all we know is his name is Alex and he works in the Navy. And we also know that he works for the Vancouver Grizzlies in the late 90s.

12:27What I'm laughing at already is just the idea that this is your message board, Tom. You're a poster on this nerd forum. And here's a guy who is basically taunting you. Guy who worships numbers saying, by the way, turns out you can't actually trust the thing that you wanted to make your career around. Yeah. And so part of me is just like, I need to know if this person's real. There's a mystery figure here. Yes. And for 13 years, this story was dead until the Jaron Jackson Jr. story happens. Right. So, okay. So this Jaron Jackson alleged conspiracy on Reddit, another internet forum story, ends up being debunked.

13:06But it rekindles in your brain the actual conspiracy that you believe to be a lot deeper than people may on the surface realize. Right. And so it dawns on me. Like, I need to go to the internet. to find my answer of who Alex is. But I'm going about it the wrong way. I'm going about it on Google. I should have been going to eBay. So when you called me saying that you went to eBay and you found something, I was personally a little worried for just your sanity. Yeah, yeah. But you know what is on eBay? A lot of old documents. one of which is what's called a media guide. For the kids who don't appreciate the institution of the media guide, back in our day, they used to print directories and send them out to media members.

14:03Yeah, like, hey, what are the statistics from last year? There's no basketball reference. You need to open up the media guide. A physical book. A book to look at, oh, this person was the 13th pick in the 1992 draft. Yeah, here's the phone number for the assistant PR person. That is where I needed to go. I needed to find, Pablo, the 1996-97 Vancouver Grizzlies media guide. How in demand was this lost artifact? What if literally no one but you, Tom Haberstroh, even gives the beginning of a shit about this? there is one person who is not only giving a shit, but willing to sell that shit to anybody who wanted it for$5.

14:54Tom, you've been dangling this reveal in front of me for so long. This right here. It's like a basically a clip art, a clip art cover. Very glossy. Look at this bear paw right here. A bear paw over an IBM mouse. This is so 1997. Look at this. Yes, Bryant, big country, Reeves in the middle, holding a basketball with two giant paws, as it were. We got Sharif Abdurrahim, number three. Very excited Sharif, by the way. And a literal map of the NBA, in case you didn't know where the Indiana Pacers were located. So I want you to do something. Yes. Okay. I want you to open up the page. This is real. I've never held this before in my life.

15:37How does it feel? Oh, it's weighty. I want you to open up to page 177. What does it say? Vancouver Grizzlies Courtside Crew, Italics, T-lettering, San Serif font. Yeah. Okay, lower on down. There is a title there, Game Caller slash Technical. The name next to that is Alex. Yes. Alex Rucker. I'm telling you, Pablo, is felt like in Usual Suspects when the reveal happens, the Kaiser Sose moment when he dropped the mug onto the floor. The media guide falls to the floor in my mind's eye at your home and immediately, yeah, this voice plays. I used to kind of oversee analytics and the research and development, the data scientists, the computer geeks, if you will.

16:29And so now I oversee all the departments within basketball operations. In some ways, this was like an inside job on a number of levels. Like, this is an analytics guy. He should know full well about the sanctity of stats. So what do you do with this information now that you know who Alex from the Navy actually is? I call him.

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18:18Pablo Torre:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.

18:33I want to make sure the people out there who don't know Alex Rucker intuitively, Tom, understand why this name means something. Who is Alex Rucker? So Alex Rucker is one of the most well-known figures in the NBA analytics movement. He was a pioneer of the SportView data. SportView is the camera tracking data where we can now see where everyone is on the floor, how fast they're going. The revolution was around the accuracy of what was being recorded. If you want the most efficient way to put two points in that basket, start learning how to do these predictive models with camera tracking data. And Alex Rucker was at the forefront.

19:14And not to say he was the only one, but this is one of the more well-known characters in this space. Yes, and he used that to then, and I remember this intimately, to then follow his former boss, Brian Colangelo, he of the very normal collars, find a new slant, to the Philadelphia 76ers, replacing Sam Hinckley, of course, of the process fame, and my own personal neuroses. Alex Rucker was the VP of analytics and strategy, the executive VP of basketball operations. In 2020, he's running the 76ers alongside Elton Brand, the GM of the team. This is a guy who is that well-known, that respected. There were headlines.

19:54The Philadelphia Inquirer had the headline, Sixers team of NBA stats gurus is taking analytics to the next level. Yeah. And a big picture of Alex. Then Daryl Morey comes in, and he takes over for basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers. It's just always incestuous. the Sloan-ness of everything. Here comes Dork Elvis. Yeah. You know? Yeah, Bigfooting, the previous guy. But that's, by the way, that's where I left Alex Rucker in my brain. I didn't think about him until this story. And until I picked up that media guide, I hadn't really thought about Alex Rucker. But I had to confirm. I had to go straight to the source.

20:34I don't know how long we'll go, but you let me know if there's a hard out that you need to be gone for. Nah, man. And then we'll roll. Happy to shout. All right. Three, two, one. So when you make this Zoom call, it turns out, which I imagine is fairly uncomfortable for Alex Rucker, what does he say when you confront him with the evidence that actually he might be the scammer who selectively edited NBA history? Well, he owned up to it, first off. Like, pretty quickly, he owned—that was me. But here's why that happened. He was 20, Pablo. 20 years old, running the stats for a professional NBA team.

21:15I was immature. I handled things in a way that I certainly wouldn't today. But no, that's just a part of my life journey, right? It's funny as you kind of reach adulthood to the extent that I've reached it. It's like every time I'll sit here and think back to how I was two or three years ago. And I always look back like, man, why did I do that? Why did I think that? And hopefully I continue on an arc of becoming a continually better person and refining who I am and having an impact on others in a positive and loving way. With all due respect, you put a 19, 20-year-old in charge of anything and you're playing with fire.

21:54So the very basic fact that a 19, 20-year-old was in charge of the sacred numbers that we came to revere as just historical fact is already jarring to me. How does somebody that young get the idea to even like do this, to get away with this? He gets the idea to do this almost immediately upon arrival in Vancouver. When I first got the role, I'm bringing the computers home. I'm practicing by myself. I'm trying to develop these skills so that I can do the best I can once the first jump ball happens. My job is to create the most accurate historical record of what occurred in the game. And I learned very quickly that that was not the prevailing viewpoint.

22:38I went to the training in Detroit. Part of this training is they would show us video clips. They show us talking to Malone clip. And there's a discussion. And that wasn't an assist. It was a pass. And then Malone dribbled a couple times, pump fake, pump fake, and then made a tough shot. And that's great. But to me, there's no real connection. There's no causal connection between the pass and the basket. and the majority opinion by mile was, oh no, that's definitely an assist. I was like, what? I was like, oh, that's John Stockton. I'm like, yeah, I understand, but so? I left there clearly understanding that, you know, yes, we are supposed to create the most accurate representation we can, but the NBA is also an entertainment business and it's up to us in very small part as statisticians to support or reinforce stars and excitement and fun.

23:31And that message was definitely reinforced internally within the Grizzlies. So what he says to you there, Tom, is to me, like, pretty f***ing important, right? This message was definitely reinforced internally within the Grizzlies. So the team itself was actually in favor of this happening. It wasn't just Alex Rucker, lone actor here. This was something endemic. This was something understood. that you grease the wheels or you pump up the stats for your guys. When he says, yeah, John Stockton, the assertion right there is like, we need John Stockton to be a star. So we're making that in a sense.

24:10Yes. But the key here is, this is the Vancouver Grizzlies, right? They're the new expansion team. They're in Canada. People don't know, there's a team in Vancouver. Right. So how does a stat keeper market the team or have a role in marketing the team? Well, it's that. It's what if Sharif Abdurrahim has 10 boards instead of 9 boards? Because 10 will get you on SportsCenter. So how do you do that? You cook the books. So the Nick Van Exel thing, that phantom assist that wasn't even on screen, how did the Grizzlies feel about that? Because that's the opposing player. He was actually congratulated after the game.

24:51Think about that. By his employers. By his employers saying, hey, good job out there. We're definitely going to be on SportsCenter now. That's incredible. Like, that's how you market the team. Tom Haberstroh in a kitchen in Connecticut is now going to see that teal Vancouver Grizzlies aesthetic. Yes, that cartoon bear, the claws. There's Bryant Reeves. That's where he ended up in the NBA, on the Vancouver Grizzlies. So that's part of how they marketed the team was through the stat keeper. So when you, adult grown-up, Tommy, look at the numbers, right? And you see Sharif Abdurrahim's stats. How obvious is it that this was actually materially happening?

25:32This was pretty heartbreaking because when you look at what Alex is alleging and then you look at the numbers on Basketball Reference and you search or you filter for his best block games, what I found out that was in Sharif Abdurrahim's first two seasons with the Grizzlies, he registered three-plus blocks, at least three blocks in 13 games. In all 13 games, he was playing at home. Okay, two plus blocks. It's not exactly subtle so far. Yeah. How about multiple blocks, okay? In those first two seasons, he had 38 games in which he had two plus blocks. 32 of them were at home. So the invisible hand of Alex from the Navy, Alex Rucker, is pretty obvious in retrospect.

26:22Yeah, and he, in so many words with Deadspin, he admitted that, like, a lot of the blocks and steals and assists, like, you could fudge a little bit. And Bryant Reeves and Sharif Abdurrahim were part of that fudgery. The fudgery as an incentive for specifically a team desperate for attention. How obvious was this to you when you look at the record beyond Vancouver? Yeah, so I looked at the data of just which teams saw a large disparity between their home blocks and their away blocks. Yes, exactly. Okay, so I went from 1984 now to the present. That's when blocks started getting charted in the NBA officially, 1984.