Cooked Books: A Former Scorekeeper on Box Score Inflation

A few days ago I linked to a Deadspin story about a former NBA scorekeeper who had spoken frankly about how he had inflated some players' statistics. Deadspin's Tommy Craggs has dug much deeper into the story (slightly PG-13 for language), and has more insight from Alex in a must-read post. Now, anyone's normal reaction would be: well now why would we believe some disgruntled ex-employee? And the response is that at home, many players get significantly more assists, rebounds, blocks and steals (the discretionary statistics) than when they play on the road. And there's a built-in conflict of interest. Home teams have invested fortunes in players and want them to look good -- and they employ the stat crews. Read the whole Deadspin post, and you'll see stats from his own career that make the point. As Alex remembers it now, Olajuwon had a double-double with nine blocks at some point during the fourth quarter. "Someone in management came to me and said, basic...