JUST ABOUT EVERYONE has his or her own idea of what constitutes an assist.
It’s simply too easy to stretch the definition (loosely: a pass that leads to a basket) for there to be one viewpoint.
Thus, the one statistic in basketball that supposedly quantifies a player’s playmaking abilities is also one that should be taken with a grain of salt.
One person’s assist is another’s swing pass.
Much like the error in baseball, it comes down to a matter of opinion.
“Nobody believes it,” when a player has high assist numbers, Chimacum girls basketball coach Brad Burlingame said.
“We had Richie French when I was coaching Quilcene, and he was just a hair under 10 assists [per game] one season. And I just cringed to tell anybody that. I didn’t want to be called a liar.”
Unfortunately, that’s what it often comes down to with something as subjective as assists.
More than once I’ve found myself more than a little dubious of a coaches’ assist numbers in the past.
That’s because I know how differently the stat is viewed among coaches.
Some coaches, for instance, award assists on passes that lead to made free throws. Depending on whom you talk to, that’s an incorrect interpretation of the stat.
Still, it’s hard to argue that a player’s pass — like a pass that leads to a hard foul on what would have been an easy layup — didn’t lead directly to points once the receiving player hits his foul shots.
“Honestly, I thought everybody [awarded assists on made free throws],” said Forks boys coach Scott Justus, one of a handful of area coaches who does so.
“I just thought that’s how it was done . . . for as long as I can remember in my high school days.”
Many coaches, of course, disagree with that notion.
Some, in fact, won’t give out an assist unless the pass directly leads to a basket. And by “direct,” I mean no dribbles from the scoring player.
Personally, I fall more on the side of generosity.
While I’ll never award assists for passes that lead to made free throws, there are other areas where I’m much more lenient.
A post-entry pass, for example, gets an assist in my book every time, even if the scorer makes a move in the paint to get off his or her shot.
I’ll also give out assists on passes that lead to fastbreak layups, even after a couple of dribbles.
I just won’t give one out if it’s clear the scorer did all of the heavy lifting, like, say, a pass to the wing that’s followed by a cross-over dribble drive and a pull-up jumper.
Sorry, that’s just a good offensive player making a good offensive move.
Still, there’s always one or two people who disagree.
Once, a parent even approached me after a game to say, “You got my daughter’s assist numbers wrong last week.”
He’d kept his own stats throughout the game, and decided I was three or four off. (Side note: His daughter played for a coach who subscribed to the aforementioned free throw rule.)
So how much does the stat go toward a coach’s judgment of his own players?
“When you’re talking about those little ambiguities, you really have to look at situation by situation,” Burlingame said, “so it’s game film at that point.
“Padding assist stats really doesn’t help at all.”
Said Justus: “Is it advantageous [to award assists on free throws]? I don’t know.
“I just know that when [the players] know that they just picked up an assist . . . they know they’ve done something to help the team.
“Maybe it’s nothing but it just seems like there’s a little bit of a spark from our guards.”
Scorer remembered
It looks like I left off one player from last week’s list of 1,000-point scorers for Neah Bay boys basketball since 1976.
Jed Johnson, an All-State guard in 1997-98, is actually second on the Red Devils boys’ scoring list with 1,410 points. He is one of eight Red Devils to surpass 1,000 points, according to Neah Bay sports historian Bud Denny.
Johnson still lives on the North Olympic Peninsula today and works at Westport Shipyard in Port Angeles.
I should know. We played together on Westport’s Port Angeles City League team three years ago, me riding his coattails (among others) to the league’s best record
(Unfortunately, we flopped in the playoffs.)
No longer teammates, he made me look silly a couple of weeks back when I tried to guard him in another City League game.
So either he’s still got, or I never had it.
Possibly a little of both.
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Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column regularly appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.
