APBRmetrics

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 676 Location: cleveland, ohio

I would argue that in some sense this is already happening because not only is this theoretical point guard (Steve Nash on the '04 Bobcats) not getting the assists he would be getting by passing to better players, he's also taking some associated risk of committing turnovers by throwing these passes that tends to reduce his rating.

i'm not sure i quite understand this reference of steve nash on the bobcats, but if it refering to the assumption that if nash was on the bobcats he would be getting less assists, the assumpiton would be false. history shows a number players with high assist numbers or even high ast/min numbers on poor shooting teams...

nor do i quite understand the idea of "good" passers increasing the FG%s of the players they pass to (the assumption being they are "better" passes, i.e. they put the players receiving the passes in a better position to score) and how this relates to assists. the assumption may very well be true (i don't know), but i do know it doesn't correlate with assists...

i haven't been able to find a correlation between a player with a high number of assists and those assists leading to higher FG%s for the players receiving those passes. is there evidence of this at www.82games.com (if so this is just another example of why roland's data is so valuable)? having looked at the stats of a number of high assist PGs since 1977-78 being traded to new teams and looking at the FG% of that player's teammates before and after his arrival, i find no correlation for an increase in FG% being due to that high assist player...

right now steve nash and brevin knight are leading the league in assists per min with 0.32. no one else in the league is even close (jason williams and earl watson of the grizzlies are next best with 0.22 ast/min, along with knight's backup in charlotte jason hart). yet one PG - nash - plays for one of the best teams in the league and the other - knight - for one of the worst...

also right now the steve nash on court/off court eFG%s for the suns are .558 (1542 min) and .480 (770 min), and yes for jason kidd are .484 (1040 min) and .433 (1192 min), but for brevin knight are .448 (887 min) and .459 (1160 min). so while the data does show an increase in eFG% for "good" passers like nash and kidd, it does not for knight, who like nash is leading the league - by far - in ast/min...

one reason i believe steve nash is piling up assists at a career high rate in phoenix (and b.knight in charlotte) is the same reason andre miller did so in cleveland in 01-02. if a high touches/min PG who shoots less per touch than the average PG has starting teammates with average or below average touches/min for their positions (other than PG) but who also shoot the ball on a high 40%-50% of their touches or more will automatically get more assists, whether those teammates shoot a high FG% or not. why? because regardless of the FG%s they shoot they are still shooting alot once they receive that pass from the PG (i.e. they aren't often furthering their touch by dribbling, which usually takes away the PG's opportunity for an assist)...

once andre miller went to different teams (LAC/DEN) with frontcourt players or SGs with average or higher than average touches/min that could dribble and pass, his assists and ast/min numbers went down...

two of the best assist men in the league since 1977-78 were johnny moore and john lucas. yet both players had their highest ast/min marks on the same team - the 83-84 spurs. the reason is not because they were "better" passers that season, but it was because of the makeup of the team (the starters in particular). both mike mitchell and artis gilmore had lower touches/min than the average SF and C that season, yet each shot the ball with 50% or more of their touches. plus george gervin was taking 20 shots a game and shooting the ball with 50% of his touches...

plus the spurs that season were 6th in the league in FTM, which you would intuitively think would decrease assist opportunities. yet moore and lucas still had the highest ast/min marks in the league that season of all PGs...

Kevin Pelton · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 1:46 am Post subject:

What Dan is looking at provides us another way of looking at the assist success of players like Knight and Miller, in that, while they get plenty of assists per minute, their assist/assist opportunity ratio is almost certainly lower than Nash's. That's in part because their teammates' true shooting percentages are lower (dramatically so in Knight's case; not probably that huge of a difference for Miller), but it's a nice way of demonstrating the concept you're pointing out, that their assist rates are largely a product of the way their teams are put together.

Nikos · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 346

Kevin Pelton · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:44 am Post subject:

Another topic worth discussing is whether this kind of "assist success rate" is driven solely by teammates or by player skill in passing. Bob doesn't think so, but I disagree. A good passer will put his teammates in better situations to shoot. He'll deliver the ball to them where they want to catch it, and I do think that makes a difference.

**HoopStudies**

**Dan** **Rosenbaum**

**HoopStudies**

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 676 Location: cleveland, ohio

Another topic worth discussing is whether this kind of "assist success rate" is driven solely by teammates or by player skill in passing. Bob doesn't think so, but I disagree. A good passer will put his teammates in better situations to shoot. He'll deliver the ball to them where they want to catch it, and I do think that makes a difference.

it's not that i don't think so, it's just that i don't see any way to show/prove this from assist totals. the assumption may very well be valid, but at one time (a number of years ago) i was asked to see if i could show it through the stats and i couldn't. actually i was asked if i could show that a good passer does increase the FG%s of players and from the data available i could not find proof of this....

i looked at PGs that went from team to team (via trades, free agency, etc) and looked at the FG%s of the players on the team they left (before and after the PG left) and the team they went to (before and after the PG got there) but could not find any definitive evidence or pattern that any PGs could increase players' FG%s...

having said that, the data from roland's website could give us a step forward on this. since he keeps track of the % of FGM by players that are assisted on, this can help. if over a few seasons of collecting this kind of data we find that there are certain players who consistently have high percentages of being assisted on their FGMs, and two or three of these kind of players end up on the same team (via trades, free agency, etc) and the PGs assists (or ast/min) go up, that can tell us its the players receiving the passes....

if on the other hand a PG is traded or signed and a number of players on that team have their percentage of assisted FGMs increase, that would tell us its the PG....

**Dan** **Rosenbaum**

**Dan** **Rosenbaum** · Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:23 am Post subject:

Bob, how come you completely ignore the charting data that Ed put together that suggested that true shooting percentages were about 10 percentage points higher on potentially assisted shots (shots that would have resulted in assists had the shot gone in) versus non-potentially assisted shots?

Now Ed is skeptical of that charting because of difficulties in charting assists and because of the possible non-representativeness of his Toronto game based sample, but still this is evidence that seems as good as about anything else that we could do. Comparisons of teams after trades is tricky because a team may have lost a scorer when adding an assister and the effects on teammates' shooting percentages may cancel each other out.

I don't think there is a lot of Roland's site to get at this question, because game logs do not measure potential assists. But someone more clever than I am may be able to come up with a way to get at this question with Roland's data.

**HoopStudies**