Does NBA scorekeeping get audited? (Damian Lillard's "assist")

There are some interesting recent tweets by Haralabos Voulgaris about the recording of assist stats.

In the video example he cites, Rondo passes to Garnett. What Voulgaris is getting at, I think, is that it is not Rondo who creates the shot for Garnett, but Garnett himself who does this. The made shot occurs within two dribbles so technically speaking it CAN count as an assist, depending on who is in charge of recording the stats.

The larger point being is that there is a lot of inconsistency in how assists are counted. There's an interesting web article I read about this -- I forget where -- but one person has gone through games and boxscores and looked at how assists are recorded and came to the same conclusion, and that top PGs tended to have more assists counted for plays that would not be counted for mid-tier PGs.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Here is the assist from the Milwaukee game that I was referring to; <a href="http://t.co/zNulAqhC" title="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhwprGUe0U8&amp;feature=youtu.be">youtube.com/watch?v=MhwprG…</a></p>&mdash; Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/270363991031816192" data-datetime="2012-11-19T03:12:53+00:00">November 19, 2012</a></blockquote>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Biggest w**** in history RT @<a href="https://twitter.com/ericwitz">ericwitz</a>: @<a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob">haralabob</a> Rondo has to lead the league in "braindead assist w**** passes" right?Any close second?</p>&mdash; Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/270343769516277761" data-datetime="2012-11-19T01:52:32+00:00">November 19, 2012</a></blockquote>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

It's funny that in NBA you get an assist even after your teamate dribles...

 

I think they missed the one that he dished out to LaMarcus Aldridge with 6:20 left of 3rd quarter (72-59), just 2 Blazers' plays before your vid.

I have been following the games through play-by-play so long (no live feed here most of the time) that I figured sometimes the player stats could be delayed along the pbp. Not necessarily that they "made up" the numbers in other plays, perhaps the system was just "delayed" in a way that those supplementary stats (such as assists) might shown up in later "plays".

In other words, Lillard's 2nd assist was in fact dished to Aldridge but was "delayed" and being logged to Matthews, and the 3rd one to Matthews was logged to Batum.

Bear with my broken English here.

 

I think the people who really need the data -- like teams' video coordinators, GMs, etc -- use the professional stat-and-video company (whose name escapes me), and they break down basketball plays into much finer categories than merely 'assists' or whatever. They are probably a lot more rigorous about how they define an assist, and what type it is, and have video of each one and audit the statistics to make sure it's right because they are selling a product that needs to be accurate. Box scores are for fans. So, the data is there to audit the box score, but I don't know if they would bother doing it since it is not very important.

 

What if I were to tell you Basketball reasons….

 

Stockton averaged 11.2 apg at home. 10.4 apg on the road. Not that big of a difference.

 

Thinking about this more widely, how does the percentage of assisted baskets across the league vary over time, and does that reflect changing patterns of play, or changing patterns of scoring?

Is there a resource online with old box scores? Might be interesting to crunch the numbers a bit.

 

I'm not 100% sure on the minute details, but I remember reading somewhere that it's an assist as long as the player who receives the pass heads to the basket, that's why feeding to the post (for someone to pull out some post moves) sometimes counts as an assist. So, I guess that's the logic behind this one. Again not too sure. The lillard one though, there's no two ways about it.