Exposing the NBA’s Forgotten Cheating Scandal

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The NBA had a scandal they hoped people would never find out about. The controversy would have blown up if it happened in the age of social media but lucky for the league this was pre-Reddit. An NBA employee posted an anonymous tell-all on a message board and this video looks at whether it could still be affecting the game today.

For years people have claimed the NBA is rigged just this week Rudy goar openly threw up the money sign in Scott Foster’s face after the game he suggested referees are influenced by sports betting a huge claim to make without any proof he just feels that way but did you know actual proof of

Cheating came out 15 years ago but went under the radar I’m not talking about the Tim Don Scandal this was years after that but the NBA quietly swept this one under the road the real question what evidence do we have it still happens today in January 1997 the Lakers were in

Vancouver playing the Grizzlies and Nick Van AEL dropped an amazing 23 assists beautiful dimes to Shaq and rookie Kobe at the time it was the eighth highest assist game in NBA history and just won off Magic Johnson’s franchise record it was also a complete lie it is always a

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Scorekeeper story in it he claims to have completely made up official NBA stats he was the Vancouver Grizzly scorekeeper but because I’m a Laker fan I gave Nick vanel 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 afterwards I fully expected someone to talk to me about it and indeed they did a Senior Management guy said great job Alex that’ll get this game on Sports Center tomorrow so he was encouraged to fake stats to get more attention for the league sure enough

People went back to the tape and were shocked van XEL passes to Kobe here who clearly goes into an ISO bucket but van XEL got the assist Alex said this wasn’t just in Vancouver you have about 40 intentional errors per game by the Home scorekeeper by intentional errors I mean

Events that never happened like rebounds or fake blocks steal heals and assists or events that are awarded to the wrong player on purpose 40 fake stats per game what does that mean for other NBA records is all of NBA history potentially a lie well first you have to

Look at which stats the scorekeeper can even fake Alex said he had the most influence on assists and blocks but Steals and rebounds could be fake too the way to get a guy an extra rebound is if a shot goes up and someone tips it and someone else recovers it you can

Give it to either one Dennis Rodman would get those all the time what if Byron Scott retrieves it ah Byron doesn’t need the rebound in fact Alex says that’s how he learned to give fake stats he was at an NBA training in Detroit and they showed the class a clip

Of the Utah Jazz Stockton dumps it to Malone who slows down dribbles maybe a pump fake was that an assist or isolation Alex said ISO everyone else said of course it was an assist it’s John Stockton so they not only fixed stats but they helped super Superstars

The league pressured us to protect and enhance the stats of elite players for example Stockton got between one and two assists per game for free and it turns out Stockton set his career high for assists in 1988 at home against the Blazers he then broke it again 1991 at

Home so you look at alltime records like Scott Skyles getting a still record 30 assists in one game for the magic at home the record for most blocks in a game Elm more Smith 17 at home are these even real records don’t tell me Michael Jordan is involved

He is a 1988 mj1 Defensive Player of the Year it’s one thing that Jordan fans bring up in the goat discussion hey LeBron didn’t win defensive player of the year Well in that year Jordan had 259 steals 165 at home 94 on the road he

Had 131 blocks 84 at home 47 on the road right in the AA the NBA was trying to pump up players their biggest Young Star wins Defensive Player of the Year as a guard but Alex said this cut both ways one time a Hall of Famer called him out

I got bed out by an Atlanta management guy because he felt I hadn’t hooked to kimbe Matumbo up with enough blocks because I had it I didn’t like him I thought he was a bit of a punk about 5 minutes later Matumbo walked out for pregame warm-ups he proceeded to glare

At me for about a minute which in my opinion is a long time for a gigantic man to glare at you but that was nothing the worst owner in the NBA was Donald Sterling of the Clippers he used this system against his own players for a nasty reason between 1987 and 2009 home

Teams assisted on about 62% of their buckets away teams 59% but for the Clippers it was the opposite in ’96 for example the Clippers scorekeeper gave them assist on 47% of the time at home but on the road they did it 60% that’s 133% better on the road unheard of

Sterling did it to suppress his own player stats so it was less likely they’d be Allstars to go cheap on their contracts but the real question is does this still happen will we actually have an answer last year a Reddit user said jiren Jackson Jr was suspiciously better

At home than on the road he also posted Smoking Gun examples of Triple J getting fake blocks and steals the post caused Adam Silver to have an emergency meeting in New York 24 hours later but it turned out the poster was wrong media people like Kevin oconor looked at replays that

Showed Triple J did deserve his stats in fact he probably wasn’t getting enough credit the NBA changed how they collect stats around 2010 and now it’s almost impossible for one man to fake stats and when you look at home Road Blocks the easiest stat to fake the Gap was huge

But started to shrink around the time of Alex’s post now it’s prac practically non-existent the NBA has killed their fake stat controversy I think this post made it to the league office but in’ 09 social media wasn’t really a thing the original post was on something called

Apbr metrics.com a random site for NBA nerds if this post happened now on Reddit it would be huge the Scandal would rock the NBA outing it as rigged for stars that’s probably why the NBA got so scared when the Triple J controversy popped up Adam Silver probably said New York I thought we

Fixed this years ago and no one noticed how is it happening again but the league got lucky this happened in ‘ 09 and they quickly swept it under the rug it does make you feel bad for guys like raan Rondo who once got 25 assists in a game

In 2017 if that happened 20 years before Rondo would probably have the all-time record by the way we found out who the anonymous Alex was Tom habro bought a 1997 Grizzly’s media guide on eBay for five bucks it said the scorekeeper was Alex Rucker a now famous analytics guy

Who ended up helping run the Sixers before darl mury got there but Alex got his start as the scorekeeper for the 97 Vancouver Grizzlies an expansion team who is especially prone to faking stats Rucker apologized on camera but said he was just the only one who had the guts

To admit it and I actually admire how he handled being confronted by Tom habr was immature I handled things in a way that I certainly wouldn’t today uh but no that’s just a part of my life Journey right like you know all due respect you

You put a 19 20year old in charge of anything and you’re playing with fires though if you put a 1920 year-old in charge of official NBA stats who’s actually at fault there so it makes sense after they got caught why the NBA changed how they keep stats now the

Triple J controversy is actually one of my favorite videos on this channel even though it was debunked it’s pretty cool to revisit how one NBA fan could shake up the entire league with a post on Reddit