PG assist numbers inflated? Interesting read here (long)

[Lakers_4_Life]

If you watch a game in one of the top European leagues like Euroleague, Spanish League, Greek League, ULEB Cup - you will see that the assists for the NBA are extremely liberal. LITERALLY you can see a guy dish 15 assists and only get credited with 5 there in the box score. LITERALLY. You watch a game and what would be something like 15 assists for Paul or Nash in the NBA is 5 for a guy like Pablo Prigioni, Theo Papaloukas, Pepe Sanches, Vasilis Spanoulis, etc.

It's the same if you watch a FIBA national team competition. It's funny seeing someone like Paul or Nash get like 3-5 assists in a FIBA international tournament in a game. I think honestly Oscra is right. Assists have become way to easy to get these days in the NBA. It's one thing when Paul or Nash sets up West or Amare and obviously when they spoon feed them, but some these assists.........it's like when you see Rafer Alston in a box score "7 assists" but you just watched the game and there were ZERO I mean ZERO actual assists. He just post fed Yao 7 times, who then made a one on one post move and got a basket........Alston gets 7 "assists".

It's actually ridiculous because he literally did NOTHING to get that assist but it appears he somehow created some offense for his team INFLATING his stats and performance. It the on the other hand has people saying "look Yao only scored when assisted look at 82games.com" and stupid nonsense like that, when the guy is literally doing everything on his own.

I've been thinking this for awhile now thinking back that you know a lot of these assists Paul is getting look nothing like say assists Magic or Stockton would get, YET he is getting similar numbers.

[NetsForce]

Assist numbers are inflated. They always have been for that matter...

I don't doubt that Paul's assist numbers are overstated. However with that being said, I feel that whatever "inflation" applies to Paul's assist numbers applies to the rest of the players in the league as well... Paul might get credited with a BS assist here and there but so do players like Nash, Kidd, Williams, Billups...

The only problem would be if the New Orleans stats crew inflates the stats of the home team significantly more than other stats crews around the league.

Now I don't think anyone can prove that they do, so I guess they're innocent until proven guilty.

(Do stats crews rotate from arena to arena or are they always positioned at the same arena? I think it would be a good idea to move them from venue to venue ever so often like the NBA does with their clock operators.)

[wigglestrue]

Assist numbers are inflated. They always have been for that matter...

Except when the definition was stricter, in the 50's/60's/70's. [/nitpick]

[TheKingOfVa360]

Assistant numbers have been inflated since the 80's

[Teen Girl Squad]

I think that in some cases an assist isn't awarded in the spirit of an "assist" Take for an example a PG driving the lane and causing three defenders to collapse, he passes out to the baseline and they swing one more pass immediately to the wing for a three. The baseline guy gets the assist, where I believe in "the spirit," the assist should go to the PG.

The term you're looking for is hockey assist, which I belive are credited in hockey for that exact same logic.

[18 Parkerville]

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That kind of thing will help your AST/TO ratio, too, I imagine. Since he's getting the assist whenever it's there but Bosh gets all the turnovers because he's the one doing the dribbling?

bingo. calderon's #'s are inflated

[NBAPhoJ]

Assistant numbers have been inflated since the 80's

There comes a point when assist numbers are no longer inflated, but rather the definition of an assist has changed.

[PimpORL]

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Except when the definition was stricter, in the 50's/60's/70's. [/nitpick]

Except their stats as a whole were inflated.[/nitpick]

[wigglestrue]

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Except their stats as a whole were inflated.[/nitpick]

Oscar's teams barely averaged more ppg than the Showtime Lakers.

[og15]

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That kind of thing will help your AST/TO ratio, too, I imagine. Since he's getting the assist whenever it's there but Bosh gets all the turnovers because he's the one doing the dribbling?

Well I wouldn't say that. If we look at the games Bosh missed and look at Jose's averaged 26.3 MPG, 7.8 APG, 1.73 TPG, so there's no difference there. It's not a case where Jose doesn't create for his teammates or anything and just get's assists from passing to Bosh.

I went ahead and edited the title to more acurately reflect the converstion in here.

It's not just PG's though, it is everyone, it is assists in general. Now this doesn't a team that is averaging 24 APG actually only averages 15 APG or something

Calderons careerer high in assists in 3 years of euroleague was 6, in his last season his highest number was 5 in almost 30mins of play per game.

Didn't want to quote the whole thing, but yea, you average more assists in the NBA than in Euroleague, now obviously it's more than just the difference in counting assists. Euroleague games are 40 mins in comparison to the NBA's 48 minutes. Also of course teams average a lot less points due to less minutes. If you look at Maccabi from 05-06 when Anthony Parker was there, they averaged 15.2 APG on 60 shots a game, 25.3% of their made FG's, Cibona assisted on 15.5% of theirs. The Suns for example were at 32% and the Jazz at 33%, though of course there were other teams that were much lower eg: Knicks 23%. Just making up numbers, I'd say the NBA would be at about 27% on average with the Euroleague at about 21% on average. So the NBA in comparison would have a 22% increase in assist numbers, so Paul for example in theory (weak, minimal research theory) would average 9.7 APG under Europe assist rules.

[G35]

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You think LeBron would average more? Chris had 7.8 as a rookie, on a team that won 17 games the year before. LeBron's high is 7.2, in 4 more minutes, and 6 more minutes per game.

I do agree with the rest of your post though.

I don't get why this guy singled Chris out in his article though, especially since there isn't much difference between his home and road games.

No I don't think Lebron would ever avg double digit assists. That's just my opinion. But I think that assists would come easier to Lebron if he had the West/Peja combo and assists would be harder for CP3 if he had the Wally/Wallace/Varejao combo. Paul has some great shooters on his team, Lebron doesn't. Kobe has better shooters than Lebron does, so his assists come easier.

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It's not like this is the only scenario, Paul could beat his man, the defence collapses and he finds an open Peterson in the corner.
Or Nash can find Amare for J from the elbow.

Good point here. There is no way to make a hard rule on what constitutes an assist. But to me passing out to a guy for an 18-20 foot jumpshot isn't that hard to do. Now as said drawing the defense in and a guy gets a layup/dunk/easy runner now that's an assist. I guess I would be hard on PG's and killing their assist numbers if I was the statistician.....

[NO-KG-AI]

Yeah, I agree with all that, I just misunderstood a bit ^^

[Alyosha12]

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Didn't want to quote the whole thing, but yea, you average more assists in the NBA than in Euroleague, now obviously it's more than just the difference in counting assists. Euroleague games are 40 mins in comparison to the NBA's 48 minutes. Also of course teams average a lot less points due to less minutes. If you look at Maccabi from 05-06 when Anthony Parker was there, they averaged 15.2 APG on 60 shots a game, 25.3% of their made FG's, Cibona assisted on 15.5% of theirs. The Suns for example were at 32% and the Jazz at 33%, though of course there were other teams that were much lower eg: Knicks 23%. Just making up numbers, I'd say the NBA would be at about 27% on average with the Euroleague at about 21% on average. So the NBA in comparison would have a 22% increase in assist numbers, so Paul for example in theory (weak, minimal research theory) would average 9.7 APG under Europe assist rules.

How does how long a game is matter, when Calderon played almost the exact same minutes in europe 30mins in euroleague=30mins in the NBA.

Oh and Calderons TOs were the same in the euroleague as they are in the NBA, ToS being a lot less subjective.
So its clear that the NBA score keepers are different to those in the Euroleague when it comes to assists.

[Doctor MJ]

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Actually the rule change came well before 1980 and the 80s/90s are the era where assist inflation is more commonly charged. Oscar Robertson is right that assists in his era were more rigorously awarded because the rule was that if you dribbled after a pass, no matter now clearly the pass led to a basket, it was NOT an assist. They changed it to passes leading directly to a basket allowing dribbles (like a "continuation" shooting foul"). That said, Oscar's numbers are even more impressive although he played with some very good catch and shoot jumpshooters (Adrian Smith, Jerry Lucas), a skill that was used more in his era. And pace was higher.

Yup, the 80s/90s point guards dominate assist leaderboards like 60s players dominate scoring. Anyone who's using the inflation argument to knock current players compared to the Magic/Bird's of the world is just plain off.

[og15]

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How does how long a game is matter, when Calderon played almost the exact same minutes in europe 30mins in euroleague=30mins in the NBA.

Oh and Calderons TOs were the same in the euroleague as they are in the NBA, ToS being a lot less subjective.
So its clear that the NBA score keepers are different to those in the Euroleague when it comes to assists.

I was speaking of the general case, I wasn't relating to just Calderon, I just quoted about him because he was used as an example. The minutes was related to the total accumulation of team assists, and there are more minutes played in the NBA than in Euroleague obviously. I don't know how Calderon's team played or if he was the primary facilitator on his team the same way he is on the Raptors, so I can't say much about his assists numbers in an isolation comparison.

But on your last point, I think that is what I said, which is that both league's count assists differently.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

1 Fiba assist = 1.5 Nba assists
I think this is a fair ratio.

[Lakers_4_Life]

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Didn't want to quote the whole thing, but yea, you average more assists in the NBA than in Euroleague, now obviously it's more than just the difference in counting assists. Euroleague games are 40 mins in comparison to the NBA's 48 minutes. Also of course teams average a lot less points due to less minutes. If you look at Maccabi from 05-06 when Anthony Parker was there, they averaged 15.2 APG on 60 shots a game, 25.3% of their made FG's, Cibona assisted on 15.5% of theirs. The Suns for example were at 32% and the Jazz at 33%, though of course there were other teams that were much lower eg: Knicks 23%. Just making up numbers, I'd say the NBA would be at about 27% on average with the Euroleague at about 21% on average. So the NBA in comparison would have a 22% increase in assist numbers, so Paul for example in theory (weak, minimal research theory) would average 9.7 APG under Europe assist rules.

Hollinger actually calculated it out using historical data. 31% increase in NBA assists for Euroleague players. The thing you have to understand though is that 5 assists in Euroleague is NOT like 7 in the NBA which is what the 31% equates to.

That's because if a player catches a pass and does anything like dribble, hesitate, pump fake, make an offensive more before shooting, whatever then it is NOT an assist. Think of all the bounce passes Nash makes to Amare........often Amare has to take one dribble before finishing or he has to make an adjustment in the air before going for the score. These are NOT assists in Euroleague.

That's why I said players like Prigioni, Sanchez, Papaloukas, Spanoulis guys that can get 5 assists or so in Spain, Greece, Euroleague these are off the chart assist numbers. But people don't seem to understand that in the US. Chris Paul would be LUCKY to get 5 or 6 assists in Euroleague. It doesn't even matter how good you are, there's only so many possessions and so many types of passes that qualify as an assist. 5 to 6 is the upper echelon that you can realistically get as an average.

[Lakers_4_Life]

1 Fiba assist = 1.5 Nba assists
I think this is a fair ratio.

Nope. At least a 2 to 1 ratio. It's really pretty easy to see. Look at the league leaders over the years in assists in the good European leagues like Spain, Italy, Greece, ULEB Cup, Euroleague. Look at how much assists the top 5 players in these leagues in the assist category average over the years.

Now compare this to the top 5 guys in assists year by year in the NBA. It's definitely about a 2 to 1 ratio. Now if you go into international tournaments like the World Championships, European Championships, Olympics, sometimes it's even more of a disparity it seems.