Harden averaged 7.5 assists last season. By my math, according to your post, Harden averaged 12 turnovers last season as well.
Thats not including the missed wide open 3s we had....he turns it over wayy to much thats a fact but to say hes not an elite distributor is false, because other then lebron he is the best distibutor in the NBA who isnt playing point guard. Durant isnt coming to houston this year which is y iam warming up to dwight returning for one more year. We wont find a better player in free agency. I just wish KDs contract ended one year earlier and we would have hid him already. Next year is our best hope as long as OKC dont win the title
I think he meant 1.6 assists/turnover. Despite an increase in usage, Harden has been remarkably consistent in his AST/TO ratio. The main argument here is whether or not a 1.6 AST/TO ratio is "good enough" for your primary ball-handler. I do not think so, which is why acquiring a secondary playmaker is so important this offseason.
I will never understand why you people think AST / TO ratio is a meaningful stat. Turnovers don't just occur on passing plays. For ****s and giggles, lets just say that Harden attempts 15 passes and 15 scoring plays a game and his assist to turnover ratio is 2.0. If he take 15 additional scoring plays, he will have more raw turnovers, and his assist to turnover ratio will go down, yet his skill in passing has not changed. If you want to standardize it and compare it across the league, then make it points produced (either scored or assisted) to turnover ratio.
Very nice analysis. Completely agree. A/T is only useful for a small subset of players who are primarily involved in distribution but have a low scoring load. It is not a good way to evaluate guys like Lebron or Harden.
The way they fantasize about the lineup sound like Horford is 100% done deal and that is not the case. I would be glad if he considers Houston.
Oddly enough though, in Harden's case there is a very direct and measurable connection between his assists and his turnovers. - His last year in OKC he averaged 3.7 APG and 2.2 TPG or 1.6 assist per turnover ratio. - Last season in Houston he averaged 7.5 APG and 4.6 TPG or 1.6 assists per turnover ratio. - For his career he averages 4.9 APG and 3.0 TPG or 1.6 assists per turnover ratio. His assists and turnovers seem to be directly proportional. As his assists go up so do his turnovers at an almost identical rate. So take that for what you will. Ignore it if you don't want to believe the numbers but the history is what it is. I would just like to add that Harden also passes the eye test of a turnover machine if you watch him and don't bother keeping up with the stats.
How many players have won a championship with an assist/turnover ratio of 1.6 or less while serving as their teams primary playmaker? Thats one reason why A/TO ratio is important.
No championship team has one in the past 15 years relying on one player...we have no one on offense who can creat except for harden, thats not his fault
This is like one of those random stats that completely has no bearing on anything... there's no evidence of cause/correlation. Maybe it's meaningful, maybe it's just as meaningful as saying how many teams have won a championship on a Tuesday, at night, with the temperature under 60 degrees, in the second week of June, and the answer being 0 or 1 or whatever. A/To ratio isn't a useless stat. It has some bearing on intelligent analysis. But that's it. I prefer TO%, which is the estimate of turnovers committed per 100 possessions. James has been at 15% basically for the last 5 years, though this last season that popped up to 16%. At the end of the day, that's not just too high, it's way too high. In the sense that it should be a 10% - meaning we need to see a 33% improvement from him really. But that won't happen. He's been too consistently "bad" at turning the ball over. So if we can get it down to the 12%-13% level, that would be great. And there's hope there. Curry was at 16% the last year with Mark Jackson, then went down to 14% then 13% this year.
It's not meaningless when you look at the data sets of championship teams. If there is only one team in 30 years that has won a championship with their primary playmaker having an A/TO ratio of 1.6 or less and 25 of 30 championship teams have a primary playmaker with an A/TO ratio of 2.0 or greater, that should speak to you. Your other point about TO% is garbage. TO% is not a true measure of PLAYMAKING efficiency for individual players. All TO% is is a ratio of turnovers to scoring attempts. That is meaningless on an individual basis. TO% does have merit when used to determine team efficiency. A turnover is a turnover is a turnover. The truest measure of turnovers for the primary playmaker is how many per game does he commit adjusted for pace?
