In a 2009 article in Deadspin, a prominent sports blog, an anonymous NBA scorekeeper reveals the various ways he boosts the stats of players. Fascinated by this, George Diemer and his co-authors conducted data analysis on every NBA team’s top two rebounders from the 2000-2001 season through the 2017-2018 season.

They found that scorekeepers indeed pad stats. Specifically, their study showed that scorekeepers will push a player’s rebounds per game into the double-digit range if they have close to 10 rebounds. However, these results were only found for scorekeepers of the home team.