Tom Haberstroh has been looking at how NBA stat keepers would cook the books for their home players. Today he’s got a piece questioning MJs 1988 DPOY
I couldn’t help but notice Ben Wallace showed up on this graphic 3 times, for biggest disparity between home blocks + steals vs road blocks + steals
It remains one of the worst black marks on NBA awards voters that Wallace has 4 DPOYs and TD has none
by Imaginary-Cycle-1977
6 Comments
Yes, TD deserved a defensive player of the year but stocks don’t measure a good defender. Iverson led the league in steals 3 times and was a traffic cone. Timmy lost out because we pushed a narrative that Bowen should win DPOY. So our voting was always split between the 2. We also can’t act like Ben didn’t deserve it though. Anchor of a league best defense for multiple seasons.
Is there any data on these player’s fouls at home vs away?
Did they just have really friendly home whistles?
The fact he never won one makes the award totally meaningless. He also was focused on winning chips not individual awards.
Having said that – Ben was an elite defender.
Aren’t those the years we were campaigning for Bruce Bowen for DPOY also? May have something to do with it. Memory may be foggy though
Eh I’m not mad at the DPOYs Ben won. I mean he WAS a monster on defense after all. But sure I guess you could argue some of those could have gone to Timmy. The most egregious year to me though is definitely ‘07 when they gave it to Camby for his stats even though the Nuggets were mid af on defense and the Spurs were #1 in scoring defense and 2nd in defensive rating.
Duncan absolutely deserves multiple DPOY awards but let’s not be silly, Wallace was an absolute monster and deserved to win his awards.