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[NBA] Scott Foster
22 hours ago
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Posted by
[NBA] Scott Foster
5 hours ago
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Posted by7 hours ago
Platinum11100StarryMost Valuable

MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES SCOREKEEPER POSTING FRAUDULENT NUMBERS FOR DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR LEADER JAREN JACKSON JR.

I would like to bring to your attention the scorekeeper of the Memphis Grizzlies.  I was wondering how a solid defensive player can suddenly have some specific statistical categories that are completely off the charts.  I am referring to Jaren Jackson Jr., who, after having missed ~16 games to start the season due to off-season foot surgery immediately started having extreme outlier high steals + blocks statistics, leading the entire NBA in blocks per game by a wide margin.  In fewer minutes per game than other players Jaron Jackson repeatedly gets outlandish block numbers at home.

I decided to take a closer look at his games and IMMEDIATELY 1 thing became crystal clear.  At home in Memphis he has 66 blocks in 16 home games, averaging 4.13 blocks per game, versus just 35 in 16 road games, averaging 2.19 in nearly identical minutes- an 89% increase in Memphis.  In home games he has been credited with 22 steals in 16 home games, versus only 10 steals in 16 road games.  This means he is averaging nearly 1.4 steals per game at home, but just 0.63 steals on the road per game- an astounding 120% increase in Memphis.  In home games he has been credited with 88 blocks + steals, versus 45 on the road.  This equates to an average of an outlandish 5.5 blocks+steals at home in limited minutes versus a reasonable and realistic, and still outstanding, 2.81 steals+blocks per game on the road.  This equates to a 1.96X home stat increase only in these 2 categories.  A 96% increase in performance specifically at home is truly an aberration which should be reviewed.  This demonstrates the sort of incredulous statistics which calls for serious analysis.

Just 3 out of his 14 games this season with 5+ blocks+steals have come on the road.  8 out of 9 of his 6+ steals+blocks games have been recorded in Memphis.  I decided to watch 2 memphis grizzlies games where he had one of his ludicrous 8+ blocks+steals games.  By my count he actually had 3 fewer "stocks"(some people refer to steals+blocks as stocks) than he was credited for by the home scorekeeper.  I wonder if the scorekeeper has some sort of vested interest in Jaren Jackson getting maximum high value defensive statistics that he thinks he can get away with putting down into the box score. 

Jaren Jackson in July - mid November started as high as +10,000 for DPOY at certain sportsbooks after the Grizzlies announced he had undergone a procedure to address a stress fracture in his right foot and would be sidelined for 4-6 months.  Now, in large part thanks to these blatantly wrong statistics, he is a huge odds on favorite at higher than -200.

I conducted some analysis on all 78 games jaren jackson played last season... my hypothesis was that his home/road difference on steals & blocks would both be small.  He had 90 blocks in Memphis and 87 blocks on the road.  He had 39 steals in Memphis and 34 steals on the road.  He had 129 "stocks" in Memphis vs. 121 "stocks" on the road.  BPG was actually 12.7% lower on the road(he played 4 fewer home games) while steals+blocks/game was 15% lower on the road- higher than i expected, but reasonable given all the differences for Memphis when playing at home vs on the road, from their home/away record difference to crowd noise to effort/energy/intensity exerted by players, etc. 90%+ higher in Memphis, however, as is the case this season, is NOT REASONABLE AND COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC.  My educated guess is that the Memphis scorekeeper(s) have been changed since last season and/or ULTERIOR MOTIVES, INCENTIVES are now in play with respect to JJJ's defensive statistics.

Why is this happening so blatantly to the point where a person can just look at Jaren Jackson Jrs. steals+blocks #s on the box score and determine with a high level of confidence whether that game was played on the road or in Memphis is the next question...

Three potential explanations, only one of which is innocent:

  1. Jaren Jackson plays MUCH MUCH MUCH harder at home and hustles like a maniac and focuses on stealing and blocking shots like crazy in Memphis, causing his numbers to be skewed in an absurd manner even compared to his regular highly efficient top 3- but realistic, road numbers. This can almost certainly be discounted because i looked at his other statistics and everything from his minutes per game to points per game to rebounds per game and even fouls are close in terms of home/away splits.

  2. The Memphis scorekeeper is a huge Jaren Jackson Jr. fan and is purposely imbellishing his steals & blocks, since that is much easier to do than points or rebounds, for instance.  When he contests a shot well, but does not touch the ball, perhaps the scorekeeper purposely gives him the undeserved stat and donates blocks to him where none occurred, for instance.

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Posted by
Knicks
1 hour ago

There is much debate right now about JJJ and the Memphis Grizzlies' scorekeeper boosting his stats. I am not skilled enough in the rulebook to analyze each play individually, but I can look at the numbers to see what the likelihood would be.

Fortunately, we can use a Normal Distribution (or Gaussian Distribution) to do this analysis. Here is a study showing Normal Distribution in NBA games..

A normal distribution lets us analyze the "bell curve" of a statistic. Once we know the mean (average) and standard deviation (how spread out it is), we can determine the probability falling in a certain range. As a rule of thumb, 68% of values will fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within 2 standard deviations, and 99.7% within 3 standard deviations. Here is a link with more reading if anyone is curious.

So now onto the analysis. I downloaded the game logs from Basketball Reference, and split them up into home and away. I calculated the Mean and Standard Deviation for his home and road games, and used a Z-Test to compare the two. A Z-Test tells you the probability that a randomly generated sample (of the same size as the data) has a mean value greater than a specified number based on the original data set. Since the number of home and away games is essentially identical, this works out.

The results of the Z-Test show that there is only a 0.000003% chance that the difference between his road and home splits is due to random chance. This is 1 in 3 million chance. I am more likely to get struck by lightning than JJJ to have gotten these stats due to random chance.

Important:

It’s important to note that statistically significant doesn’t describe the cause behind it. It could be he’s playing much better at home, or he’s getting better scorekeeping. All it says is that “something is different here”

To repeat: I am not testing why there is a difference. Just noting that there is one.

Edit: for those saying that you can’t do this analysis because home and road splits are different- see this comment from u/Fofodrip . The difference is 4.8 vs 4.7 blocks per game. It’s totally possible JJJ just plays better at home but thats not really the norm.

Link to my spreadsheet with analysis here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q8mgET8hyUOtn8XSchWZL-Jip9kPrwoF8eWS_7KOwwI/edit?usp=sharing

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Posted by14 hours ago
Starstruck
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Posted by
Celtics
40 minutes ago

Source

Regarding the r/NBA post on the Grizzlies scorekeeping: "This post is making its way around the league now, not just the internet. For what it's worth, I checked in, and the Grizzlies use the same official scorer this season as they used last season."

u/AdMassive6666's post looks like it's actually being taken serious by people in the NBA

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85 comments
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Posted by
Celtics
14 hours ago
GoldBless Up
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