bastillon wrote:My bad on team assists - I was going off my memory. But this is just semantics; the point still stands. Ast% is still connected to team performance, and shows your role within the team, not invididual performance.
Example:
Scenario #1: player A gets 10 assists. Team gets 20 FGs during that period. Ast% is 50%.
Scenario #2: player A gets 8 assist. Team gets 15 FGs during that period. Ast% is over 50% despite having less assists.
Either way, ast% does not show your individual performance. It shows your role within the team. The fact that Malone's ast% jumped is because he had a bigger role on the team. So if ast% jumped up, "an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on the floor", then it means that you had a bigger role on your team compared to previously. This is what I've been saying mid 90s Malone was less involved in running the offense. As Stockton's role decreased (and Hornacek's), Malone was more and more involved. That does not mean that he improved as a playmaker.
Most importantly, I would like someone to respond to the decrease in Malone's playoff efficiency after mid 90s. In comparison to 94-95 specifically, this decrease was substantial.
I said your point could still be argued though really it needs more caveats.
But still those wouldn't be the assist percentages, it takes out fg by the player in question as they can't get the assist (even if they created the shot for themself - which again makes it distinct from assists per 36, and as before a complementary tool where both should be used).
WRT Stockton's decreased role, under your previous (incorrect) understanding of assist percentage the following at least had an internal logic
Let's look at Stockton's role within the team. Now using ast% and usg% makes sense because it shows % relative to his entire team, in other words, describes Stockton's role within the team. I will use 96-97 as a point of comparison since you seem to be contesting that Stockton's role within his team changed in any way:
90-95: 20% usage%, 54% assists%
96-97: 18.5% usage%, 47.5% assists%.
That looks like a pretty significant difference to me. At the same time Malone's assists% and usage% suddenly skyrocketed to career highs... hm wonder why that is. Stockton is not the only one whose role was lesser. Also Hornacek was less used after about 95.
i.e. Stockton assisting less means Malone collects a higher proportion of assists without improving.
But under the actual facts of the matter it's hard to argue Malone wasn't doing more. Thus your argument becomes that he was merely "more involved". Whether that's a skill (improvement) thing or merely latent talent that is later utilized it's hard to argue that it's a bad thing to be held against later Malone (especially when the year of his largest increase in assists coincides with a fall in turnovers - though this would be more directly pertinent for those arguing for '96 Malone over '94 or '95, where in reality most will take '97 or '98, it still has some relevence as later turnover increases coincide with a boost in usage, whilst also further boosting assists).
Given your criteria places heavy weighting on the playoffs (hence '94 Malone, who has at least 5 years each side of that one which are better in the RS), that necessarily places a high weighting on what a player "did" versus "is capable of" (which the larger sample of RS would be better indicative of, hence RS performance at team and player levels is more indicative of future performance), so that would make the question in any case moot, from '96 Malone actually did add more value through his passing.