Comments on: NBA HD: Adjusting How We Measure and View Assists

By: Friday Notebook: Pierce’s Recovery, The Five Most Hated Celtics, Screeners and the Strangest Sentence Written About the C’s This Year | Boston Celtics Basketball - Celtics news, rumors and analysis - CelticsHub.com

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:43:31 +0000

[...] and Staples High School) is doing to come up with new ways of understanding assists. Last week Haberstroh calculated which players’ assists most often led to easy inside baskets and three-pointers. In a [...]

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:39:37 +0000

Possible Assists would be an invaluable stat for this. It would help describe how many times a teammate misses a short the passer set up for him, which in turn could help value a passer independantly of the quality of his shooting.

Weighing the potential assists versus those that were actualized would allow the creation of an Assist%, which I believe is what you are after: a stat that describes how effectively a given passer creates points.

By: While We’re Waiting… LeBron’s Assist Totals, Wood’s Injury and Andy’s Hot Streak | WaitingForNextYear

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:12:58 +0000

[...] Over 75 percent of LeBron Jamesâ€™ assists yield a three pointer or a bucket at the rim, highlighting just how devastating LeBron James can be as a ball-hander. Â If heâ€™s not scoring himself, he commands the help defense and double-teams, opening up the high efficiency areas for his teammates. Â Actually, 3.9 at rim assists per game understates how many buckets he yields at the rim. Â In his last ten games, the Chosen One has dished out 5.7 assists per game at the basket, nevermind every other area on the floor. Â Consider for a moment that Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, and Dirk Nowitzki each average fewer than 5.7 total assists per game. And LeBron leads the League in scoring.” [Tom Haberstroh/Hardwood Paroxysm] [...]

By: Mickey

Mickey — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:55:48 +0000

To the author: “might’ve” or “might have” not “might of”…

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:59:05 +0000

Thanks for the ‘assist’ guys. You all put it a little more eloquently than I could. Lol

By: JohnB

JohnB — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:33:01 +0000

Most of these suggested adjustments aren’t necessary, and just overcomplicate things. What people want to adjust for – the quality of the shooters – is already indirectly reflected in the weighted assist factors. A midrange shot is only worth .792 for good reason, and while some guys can make those shots at a better clip than others, it’s on the distributor to get the ball to the right shooter in the right situation – i.e. if he makes better personnel decisions, he gets more assists. So making an adjustment based upon the shooting percentage of the shooter for each assist would really be double-counting.

Here’s another thing to consider – LeBron’s assist numbers haven’t changed much over the years (unless forced to play point), but the quality of his teammates certainly has. I’d be willing to bet that the quality of the shooters only makes a negligible difference in a player’s assist numbers, compared with this zone weighing system.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:27:06 +0000

I agree with Robert in comment #1 and Andy in #19 (and possible more…I didn’t read every comment). Applying an expected value to an assist mismatches the values. One value pertains to time period before the shot. The other value applies to the shot itself. If one is going to multiply an expected value by another value, that other value should be total number of passes to that spot on the floor. That will tell you how good the passer is at finding the open shooter. OK…now who is going to collect all that data?

I like #15′s idea of point-weighting the assists. Maybe giving a bonus point to an assist on a game-winning field goal (the money ball). And while we’re at it, we should count passes that result in two foul shots (which would be weighted according to the player’s free throw percentage). There’s a big difference between passing to a wide open Shaq and a well-covered Shaq

By: Asher

Asher — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:24:55 +0000

Like the commenters above said, I don’t get why you’re decreasing the weight of a successful assist because shots from the area that assist went to often don’t go in. That shot did go in. It’s like saying, “he hit a home run on this ball in the dirt, but let’s weigh that less than a home run off a bad pitch because usually people don’t hit balls on the dirt.” Well that guy did.

By: suga shane

suga shane — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:17:32 +0000

I just realized someone else had made some of the same points as me. carry on…

By: suga shane

suga shane — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:13:52 +0000

I like the idea, but i have a few issues with it.

#1. If you are going to have wAPG based on shooting percentage, shouldn’t you base that on that player’s team % (minus his own fg%). after all he is passing to his team not another team and shouldn’t be penalized or credited by better/worse shooters around the league…

#2. i dont think you can take away points for mid-range assists. The shot went in, so its a full 2 points. You should give extra points for 3′s that go in. If you want to prove who is a more efficient passer then…

#3. Efficiency in assists should be based on how many times the player in question passed to a SHOOTER (Make or Miss) in certain areas of the court.

For example, Lebron might pass to the mid-range shooter 10 times a game, but only 1.8 of them went in. If we are going to start tracking quality of assists, we should also track assists that aren’t finished/converted into points.

If Lebron or JKidd find a guy wide open 10 times and he misses all 10 shots, we have no way of crediting Kidd or James for their efforts…

This would be a pain in the a$$ to track but if we are going to adjust assists, lets figure it out correctly.

twitter: @suga_shane