Lindsay Whalen's 20 point, 10 assist performance: A look at "potential assists"

One stat not kept on scoresheets is the potential assist (see link above) - passes a player made that led to a missed instead of made shots. In addition to her 20 points and 10 assists in the Minnesota Lynx' win last night, point guard Lindsay Whalen had eight "potential assists" last night (rough count in an interrupted NBA TV broadcast), four of which set up threes, which are more valuable than most 2 point assists.

We don't really need more stats than that to know how good Whalen's performance was, but people seem to struggle with making point guards MVP candidates. We like to talk about point guard play in terms of points plus points they created (Whalen's assists led to 23 points last night). Her potential assists set up opportunities for 22 additional points. It's hard to make a persuasive basketball argument that she's not a top 5 MVP candidate.

9 months ago Nate Parham 2 comments 1 recs |

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One big problem with assists in the box score....

…is that they don’t measure potential assists. It would be as if box scores only counted field goals made and not field goals attempted. Having one without the other wouldn’t give you nearly as much information.

If there’s something that needs to be added to the box score, it is the “AA” – “assists attempted”.

by James Bowman on Sep 9, 2011 6:24 PM EDT reply actions

And I think it would change the way people think about what the best point guards do compared to the "good" ones

When you factor potential assists in with turnover ratio, I think you’d get a more nuanced look at it and more separation between good, great, and serviceable.

Twitter: @NateP_SBN.

by Nate Parham on Sep 9, 2011 7:10 PM EDT up reply actions