There are, undoubtedly, countless instances of NBA stat crews fudging numbers to give hometown players an extra assist, blocked shot or rebound to help boost a box score, but what happened in Tuesday’s game between the Washington Wizards and Atlanta Hawks was just plain bizarre. The thing to keep in mind is that the game was played in Washington D.C., where you’d think the stats crew would be more lenient towards the Wizards. Not so much.
Looking at the original box score, John Wall was credited with six turnovers, while teammate Bradley Beal had seven — a career-high — coming off the bench. Overall, the Wizards coughed up the ball 25 times, which is an absurd amount of turnovers under any circumstance. And the league agrees. Not only that, the turnover totals for the Wizards’ young stars were wrong as well. Beal did not, in fact, set a new career high in turnovers, as he committed only five. Wall actually committed seven, and the team only committed 20. Sure, 20 is still a lot, and certainly contributed to what counts as a disappointing close loss at home. But five is a pretty significant margin of error.
The NBA also revealed that some players’ shooting stats were misreported as well. Kyle Korver shot 0-3 from the field (not 0-4) and Paul Pierce shot 6-16, not 6-14. In regards to Pierce’s line, it’s much easier to create an assist out of thin air than to make a missed field goal disappear. Hell, the league will find one wrongly credited assist to rob you of a triple-double. You think they wouldn’t notice a difference of five turnovers or two missed shots?
