A question about counting assists in NBA history...

[celtics543]

I remember Tommy Heinsohn saying that in his playing days you only got an assist if the player immediately put up the shot. If they took a dribble then there was no assist. That would seriously deflate the number of assists.

[PistolPeteJR]

We're bumping decade-old one-page threads now...?

[CIN-C-STAR]

2009-2022: 23 AST/G vs. 85 FGA/G.

1960-1973: 23 AST/G vs. 102 FGA/G.

Ergo, players from the Wilt Chamberlain Era should have their assists adjusted upwards about 20% to adjust for the massive rule/rule interpretation changes.

Thoughts?

Yeah I didn't even think about the blocks.
Wilt probably would have had a triple-double just about every game between points, rebounds and assists/blocks. And he'd probably have a couple dozen quadruple-doubles a season too.
Crazy stuff.

[Doctor MJ]

2009-2022: 23 AST/G vs. 85 FGA/G.

1960-1973: 23 AST/G vs. 102 FGA/G.

Ergo, players from the Wilt Chamberlain Era should have their assists adjusted upwards about 20% to adjust for the massive rule/rule interpretation changes.

Thoughts?

I think the way to look at stats like this is:

If there was a motivation for a home scorekeeper to fudge stats to make a guy look better in a stat that he was getting attention for, the scorekeeper was probably doing it.

So basically anything that's not objective, consider it likely that all stars known for that stat had that stat padded, and that the main difference across eras is the fact that people started paying more attention to stats across the board.

This is another way of saying that I'd expect Bob Cousy was likely the first to get his assists padded, and that every major assist guy after that got his padded as well. And thus I don't think adjustments like this are wise. In fact, if we're talking about how much of an outlier the Cousy's of the world were, we should probably expect that their outlier-ness was exaggerated relative to their peers in a way modern players aren't.

Note: I do think it's worth analyzing home vs away assists to get a sense of how extreme this was. I no longer have data on this, but sufficed to say that some team's scorekeepers seem to have been far more egregious on this front than others.

[Nate505]

I think it has more to do with the quality of the scorekeepers and how much home cooking goes on than the era in history. John Stockton's assist per game average at home was much higher than on road games for example.

I've heard that repeated many times, but in his career he averaged 10.9 assists at home and 10.1 assists on the road. 0.8 assists more a game at home doesn't seem "much higher" to me.

[Harry Garris]

I think it has more to do with the quality of the scorekeepers and how much home cooking goes on than the era in history. John Stockton's assist per game average at home was much higher than on road games for example.

I've heard that repeated many times, but in his career he averaged 10.9 assists at home and 10.1 assists on the road. 0.8 assists more a game at home doesn't seem "much higher" to me.

Yeah, you're right. I did some more digging and found that John Stockton's home versus away assist disparity isn't unique at all and pretty much every player gets a similar treatment from home scorekeepers.

[Nate505]

I think it has more to do with the quality of the scorekeepers and how much home cooking goes on than the era in history. John Stockton's assist per game average at home was much higher than on road games for example.

I've heard that repeated many times, but in his career he averaged 10.9 assists at home and 10.1 assists on the road. 0.8 assists more a game at home doesn't seem "much higher" to me.

Yeah, you're right. I did some more digging and found that John Stockton's home versus away assist disparity isn't unique at all and pretty much every player gets a similar treatment from home scorekeepers.

Poor Steve Nash got jobbed in that category. He's one of the few I've found (of great players anyway) where it's the other way around. Not by much, but still, come on Phoenix/Dallas scorekeepers

[Alonzo_Morning]

Put it this way.

Bob Cousy won an assist title averaging 7apg in an era where teams scored well over 100ppg average.

The assist stat is ridicilous. I have seen guys get an assist after the person they passed to took three dribbles and did a spin move.

I think at the moment you are given an assist if you are the last person to pass to someone before they score. Even if they waste 20 seconds of the clock in an iso move.

It's hard to believe you even know what a basketball looks like if you really think this is true

He's right though

[antonac]

I've bitched about how overstated the assist is (especially if it's not scored the right way).

But I have another problem with the assist as a statistic; it's one thing to recognize a teammate being open for an easy basket and hitting him for a look you know he'll hit at a high percentage. It's a whole different story if all you do is have the ball the whole game and pass the ball to teammates 80 times hoping they shoot it every time.

I'm not saying that's totally how it breaks down, but as an offensive efficiency metric the assist is lacking. I think a better way to measure it would be: what percentage of passes after a teammate has taken a shot leads to an actual assist? That way you're better measuring whether a guy is making the right reads on a per-possession basis or if he's just giving it up to guys who like to shoot the ball a lot, playing in a really high-pace offense, etc.

So you'd have stats like:
FGA/pass into a shot
FG/pass into a shot
FG%/pass into a shot

ie Mike Conley passes it to Marc 5 times, Marc takes the shot 3 times and makes it twice.
So just to make it clearer:
3 Field Goal attempts/5 passes into a shot
2 FG/5 passes into shots
2FG/3FGA=.666FG%/pass into a shot

I think that would be a lot better at measuring the kinds of looks you actually create for teammates and how good you are at reading offensive situations. And I don't think it would be that hard to keep track of.

The other problem with the assist is that it also rewards guys who play in a system where people are more likely to take jumpers, because if you're dropping it off to guys down low, a lot of the time they're getting fouled and going to the line instead of scoring a basket. I don't know if it breaks down that way statistically, but that's what I suspect anyway.

The issue with this is why does the casual, box score checking fan, need easy access to that kind of information?

The finer points of playmaking are covered in detailed analytics and NBA teams will employ people to further breakdown these points creating a picture of usefulness as a passer.

But the box scores don't necessarily need to reflect this. Arguably box scores are little more than historical benchmarks (to lessen the impact of spamming threes I once suggested a made basket is worth 3 and beyond the arc is worth 4, the main objection to this is would invalidate scoring comparisons across eras) and as such should be preserved as is regardless of how practically useless the are.

[ty 4191]

Note: I do think it's worth analyzing home vs away assists to get a sense of how extreme this was. I no longer have data on this, but sufficed to say that some team's scorekeepers seem to have been far more egregious on this front than others.

Hi Doctor MJ,
All players have complete career home/road splits at BB-Ref.

E.g.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cousybo01/splits/

[Doctor MJ]

Note: I do think it's worth analyzing home vs away assists to get a sense of how extreme this was. I no longer have data on this, but sufficed to say that some team's scorekeepers seem to have been far more egregious on this front than others.

Hi Doctor MJ,
All players have complete career home/road splits at BB-Ref.

E.g.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cousybo01/splits/

Thank you, but the cells in question look blank to me.

[FJS]

I think it has more to do with the quality of the scorekeepers and how much home cooking goes on than the era in history. John Stockton's assist per game average at home was much higher than on road games for example.

A lot of players use to have better stats playing at home than away... He did score more too at home than away... nothing to do with scorekeepers.

And there's a plenty of year where the difference was minimal

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/1993
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/1994
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/1996

Or where he assisted more on the road
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/1995
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/1997

The difference between playing at home or away was 0.8 in his whole carreer, so stop with this myth about scorekeepers gifting assists to John Stockton
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01/splits/

[ty 4191]

Note: I do think it's worth analyzing home vs away assists to get a sense of how extreme this was. I no longer have data on this, but sufficed to say that some team's scorekeepers seem to have been far more egregious on this front than others.

Hi Doctor MJ,
All players have complete career home/road splits at BB-Ref.

E.g.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cousybo01/splits/

Thank you, but the cells in question look blank to me.

DoctorMJ,
And, question for all the NBA historians here....

What year did the assist rules change in the NBA, and why?

Assist % leaders 1964-1965 (first year of tracking) through 1973-1974:



1980-1989:



2014-2015 through 2023-2024:



Oscar Robertson would not be in the top 20 the last 10 years, yet he led in assist % during his actual career (last 10 years of it, also).

Something drastic changed.

[Doctor MJ]

Hi Doctor MJ,
All players have complete career home/road splits at BB-Ref.

E.g.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cousybo01/splits/

Thank you, but the cells in question look blank to me.

DoctorMJ,
And, question for all the NBA historians here....

What year did the assist rules change in the NBA, and why?


Oscar Robertson would not be in the top 20 the last 10 years, yet he led in assist % during his actual career (last 10 years of it, also).

Something drastic changed.

I'm not aware of any official rule change.

My guess would be that the explanation here is about something we might call "Goodhart creep".

Goodhart's law is typically summed up as "When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure". That's oversimplistic, but what it alludes to is the fact that when a measure becomes something that people with the power to skew it have incentive to skew it, they probably will.

I'd guess that as assists became a thing that people talked about, they got "inflated" by 3 methods:

1. Scorekeepers "rounded up" when an assist involved there was a vested interest in giving attention to a given player for his assists. So this would be first and foremost hometown scorekeepers giving assists to star facilitators, but would likely lead to a gradual creep of what was considered an assist for everyone.

2. Facilitators chasing assists.

3. Heliocentric strategies which didn't necessarily intend to give one guy more assists, but allowed players who dominate the ball more, which naturally led to a greater concentration of assists.

I put "inflated" in quotes to leave the question of whether that's the appropriate term for all scenarios as something for further consideration.

[ty 4191]

Thank you, but the cells in question look blank to me.

DoctorMJ,
And, question for all the NBA historians here....

What year did the assist rules change in the NBA, and why?


Oscar Robertson would not be in the top 20 the last 10 years, yet he led in assist % during his actual career (last 10 years of it, also).

Something drastic changed.

I'm not aware of any official rule change.

My guess would be that the explanation here is about something we might call "Goodhart creep".

Goodhart's law is typically summed up as "When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure". That's oversimplistic, but what it alludes to is the fact that when a measure becomes something that people with the power to skew it have incentive to skew it, they probably will.

I'd guess that as assists became a thing that people talked about, they got "inflated" by 3 methods:

1. Scorekeepers "rounded up" when an assist involved there was a vested interest in giving attention to a given player for his assists. So this would be first and foremost hometown scorekeepers giving assists to star facilitators, but would likely lead to a gradual creep of what was considered an assist for everyone.

2. Facilitators chasing assists.

3. Heliocentric strategies which didn't necessarily intend to give one guy more assists, but allowed players who dominate the ball more, which naturally led to a greater concentration of assists.

I put "inflated" in quotes to leave the question of whether that's the appropriate term for all scenarios as something for further consideration.

Excellent post. As always, from you.

Here's what I've read about assists increasing by 50% compared to the 1965-1974 period.

I cannot, at this moment, provide source quotes or links for the first one:

1. In the 60's and 70's an assist was only credited if a player passed to someone "in the act of shooting". I read this in one of the five Wilt Chamberlain biographies I've read the past 3 years. I can't find the page number (citation and quote) from Alex Hannum at the moment, but what I read was, no dribbling prior to a shot in the 60's to get an official assist. Can you verify or discredit this?

2. The first mention in any newspaper of the term "Triple Double" in the NBA was by Bob Ryan, Boston Globe, 1/22/82, reprinted, of course, in the AP across the country. It was so novel that it was called "so called" and "Triple Double" put in quotes.



If the term didn't even exist, I seriously doubt anyone cared, outside of perhaps(?) Harvey Pollack. That might contribute to the stat chasing and stat padding you mention.

But it still doesn't account for the massive discrepancy in assist percentage for the leaders, or, the league, writ large, during the 60's and 70's compared to today.

Thoughts? I really DO think the rules have changed the past 60 years as to what is officially counted as an "assist".....

[sisibilio]

2009-2022: 23 AST/G vs. 85 FGA/G.

1960-1973: 23 AST/G vs. 102 FGA/G.

Ergo, players from the Wilt Chamberlain Era should have their assists adjusted upwards about 20% to adjust for the massive rule/rule interpretation changes.

Thoughts?

Shooting % in the 60s were putrid.

[ty 4191]

Shooting % in the 60s were putrid.

Certainly a significant factor in the assist % discrepancy.

As were the rims, Chuck Connors shoes, training, shot selection, and, everything else (putrid, relatively speaking).

[Hoppy1]

So I ask: when did assists counting change? Was it an explicit rule change (not a rule per se but a guideline for scoring an assist)? Did it just happen as an evolution of the statisticians as they started to acknowledge passes that didn't directly lead to a score without a dribble?

.

Magic Johnson made passing cool and the league changed the rules.
It used to be an assist was scored when the pass led to a direct move to the basket for a score. No dribbling, no changing direction, no hesitation.
Now players can dribble, gather the ball, do the Dream Shake, fake a pass and still get an assist.

[JonFromVA]

At some point in time, the league started reviewing and correcting the score keepers. I remember early in LeBron's career, we thought we'd seen his first triple double, but then the league would swoop in and turn a 10 in to a 9.

[ty 4191]

Magic Johnson made passing cool and the league changed the rules.

It used to be an assist was scored when the pass led to a direct move to the basket for a score. No dribbling, no changing direction, no hesitation.

Now players can dribble, gather the ball, do the Dream Shake, fake a pass and still get an assist.

What year did the rules change? Do you have a source for this?