Aside from ESPN making things more complicated by stating it's the fastest triple-double in 20 years, while others say it's the first time since Tucker in 1955 (but he only played 17 minutes in the whole game off the bench so maybe his was the fastest with the amount of minutes he played). Anyway, why I started this thread is how assists are counted. I'm not trying to hate, Harden is the benefit of this probably, but if these all count as assists than I'm wondering how many of Westbrook's triple-doubles and in general assists are actually assists, just because stats keepers count them. It wouldn't surprise me if the league instructs them too, because stats and records are good selling points and make the league look good. I count 5 out of the first 10 assists by Jokic are questionable, because either: A) a guy drives to the basket and - not one where a guy makes a cut and gets a pass and immediately lays it up - basically just makes a play by himself. Just because he got a pass first, doesn't mean it's an assist in any shape or form. No matter how you interpret the rule. B) a guy takes one more dribble before taking a shot, these are the ones that are a question of interpretation and the main one I'm sure all guys in the league get nowadays. So is this a new thing or have they counted assists like this for the likes of Magic and Stockton too? I'm not taking anything away from Jokic, who's crazy good, especially his passing. What a talented big man, just awesome to watch and major all-star snub!! Should've been in over Green.
You can take multiple dribbles after a pass and the passer still gets an assist, it depends how many seconds after a pass was made you made a shot, i'm not sure whats the timeframe. You can take an inbound pass, take it coast to coast and the inbounder will get an assist if you did it fast enough. That's how it works in NBA but not in Europe, i can't recall when/if these rules were changed in NBA.
For me, assisting someone is setting him up. If he has to dribble after you pass him the ball, he is setting himself up, so no assist for you. That's common logic and is used in Europe. Even if the guy doesn't dribble after a pass, but has to make few pivots/shot fakes to get his shot off, that's not an assist for me. An assist is a pass that leads DIRECTLY to a made basket. It would be funny to see some NBA games reffed by European referees. Assist numbers would go way down for everybody.
It's not time based (unless you're talking about 2k). Here's the rules. http://videorulebook.nba.com/rule/assist/ It's mostly due to bias/poor score keepers when assist inflate http://dailythunder.com/nba-scorekeepers-inflated-stats-and-the-thunder/ http://deadspin.com/5336974/an-assist-for-nick-van-exel-how-an-nba-scorekeeper-cooked-the-book
That behind the back pass got me jumping out of my chair. And then he goes from the quick cerebral passes to just classic bully ball. I don't watch a lot of Nuggets games, but does he usually have that much pep in his step? He seemed really enthused to run quickly to set picks.
Assuming that each "assist" replay was an example where they actually gave him an assist, then yes, they gave out a handful that were not assists. It used to be that if you received a pass, then were engaged by a defender and used a dribble to elude the defender, they would not award an assist. I agree that there is an element of time involved, but I think that's a smaller part of the subjective decision making process. It's VERY possible that the NBA has relaxed their interpretation of the rule in order to pump up stats.
Assist is one of the more easily inflated stats because it has a subjective element in it. To me, a lot of assists awarded in the NBA are just simple passes. To me, it is a lot more meaningful to see what passes result in making a shot much easier than it would otherwise be. It doesn't even have to be a made shot. I think Morey has that kind of stats. It's called "quality passing" or something like that.
I was watching last night and was thinking the exact same thing. Some of those were followed by drives or delayed shots. Still a very fun player to watch
I think I had 5 or 6 assists when the showed the stat where he made his 10th. I counted 9 assists total. If that was supposed to show 17 assists then I think they are super lenient. Isn't this how Stockton received such inflated assists?
Around The Horn they asked the question if a 15 minutes triple double is better than a 50 or 60 point game.. and they said yes.. that's crazy right?
I don't even know how you can compare a triple double with a high scoring game, let alone adding the time factor to it. I've always said that triple double is one of the most (if not THE MOST) meaningless statistical achievements. The arbitrary double digit criterion applying equally to three different categories is just dumb. And the category of Assist has such a high degree of subjectivity.
