October 12, 2020 • 21 mins
A shattered WNBA record with a wonderful backstory. But was Courtney Vandersloot's recent passing mark too good to be true? A closer examination of the "assists" by a Sacramento Kings analyst reveals scorekeeper inconsistencies that can't be ignored.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to the Trickeration podcast, the number one podcast about
deception in sports. I'm your host, Matt and today we
are re examining a recent basketball record that maybe, just maybe,
definitely I don't think should have been handed out. Curious
(00:24):
to hear what you guys think after the episode, and
we got some great feedback on last week's episode, in
which I spoke with the instigator of the Great Potato
pick Off. Many people knew about this play, but we're
surprised to hear the details of how we pulled the
whole thing off and the fallout from it. So if
you haven't heard that one, make sure to go back
and check it out. And next week I will be
examining a state phishing record that may have been too
(00:46):
good to be true. But first this week, a closer
look at another fishy record. Enjoy. I think we maybe
go down the rabbit hole and now we have to
watch the previous record and see if there's any assists
there we need to take away. Back on August one,
(01:07):
Courtney Vanderslout, the point guard for the w NBA Chicago Sky,
dished out a record eighteen assists in a win over
the Indiana Fever, topping the previous mark of sixteen by
Titia Pennacciero, said the announcer at the time, quote an
unforgettable moment in w NBA history and making the performance
(01:28):
even sweeter, the record breaking assist went to Vanderslout's wife
Ali Quickly, as far as sports moments go, this one
was tough to beat. As a fan of great passers
and not knowing much about Vanderslout, I went back and
watched the assists and I had two reactions. One, Courtney
Vanderslout is a terrific passer, and two, there is no
(01:49):
way she should have been credited with eighteen assists in
this game. To my untrained eye, this stat line seemed
totally bogus, But what do I know? So I went
to the foremost expert in this kind of thing, Sacramento
Kings senior analyst Matthew Van Baummel, someone who has spent
more time than anyone analyzing the thin line between assists
and just regular passes. I think you're the first person
(02:11):
that's ever actually officially called me the foremost experts. So
I'll definitely take that. But Basically, I've done a decent
amount of work into looking at the subjectivity of recorded
statistics in basketball and what does that mean for people
who have no idea what we're talking about. Yeah, So
the prime example is the assist. If you're watching at
(02:32):
home and someone makes a pass and then the guy
takes a dribble before he shoots and it goes in,
you might think it's an assistem. I think it's not
an assist, right, because there was kind of this gray
area of where an assist starts and stops. It's not
like a made basket where it's very obvious it goes
in or it doesn't. And so the people who are
officially recording the statistics for the game have to make
(02:54):
a judgment call in a lot of these cases on
whether to score something as an assist or not. And
so I looking too, you know, if you have a
human element involved in these decisions, is their potential for
inconsistencies or biases to be involved? What about this matter?
Do you? I mean, who cares about the subjectivity of assists?
Why is that even a thing to worry about? Or
(03:15):
is that a silly question to ask an analyst that
might be a silly questions analysts. You know, this isn't
the pre eminent issue in sports analytics. This doesn't affect
who wins or loses this game. But I do think
it has a decent impact in that we use statistics
to evaluate players. I mean, certainly we use it as
(03:35):
analysts and our jobs, but even in the media, a
fan watching at home, you know, we quote these statistics
and we use that, and that influences how we see players.
And I think our perception of players has a lot
of impact. You know, team's perception of players obviously impact
salaries and team composition and construction, and media obviously has
an impact on end of season awards, and even fans
(03:57):
on just the popularity of a player. And so I
think it's important to sort of look at these building
blocks of how we're analyzing these players and at least
know what's going into them. And before we dive into
the data, I think we should established for listeners, what
is an assist I mean, that's a great question. All
(04:19):
the definitions that I've ever come across involved either some
warding of in the judgment of the scorekeeper or some
warding of a past that directly leads to a basket,
and so there is no heart and past rule like
you can only take this many dribbles, this many steps,
as much time can occur. There's subjectivity baked right into
(04:42):
the definition. And why is it a problem that there's
judgment involved. I mean, in other sports we allow umpires
to use judgment for balls and strikes, A ref uses
judgment on pass interference. What's the problem with having a
scorekeeper using judgment? Certainly judgment as an aspect of sports.
I think ideally, though, you don't want human biases impacting
(05:05):
the results of anything in sports. And so that one
of the interesting aspects of these box score statistics that
you have. Each team hires their own team of scorekeepers
to keep track of these statistics. And so if you
know the scorekeeper for one team, there is a lot
more generous and handing out assists for the scorekeeper and
(05:27):
another team, then the players on those teams are going
to have drastically different numbers, even if they're performing at
very similar levels. And then the other word you pointed
out in this definition of the assist is directly and
assist is awarded only if the last players passed contributed
directly to a made basket. How are we supposed to
know what directly constitutes? So in my understanding, there is
(05:51):
some formal training that the official statisticians go under, and
so I assume in that there's there's some sort of
video study aspect or examples given, and then they kind
of just have to build up this identifying muscle, if
you will, where they can tell what an assist is
or isn't. But you are watching at home, I mean,
(06:12):
I think everyone has slightly different definitions. I think from
my perspective, what almost the ideal situation would be is
is if everything was just directly comparable, there was a
hard definition of what is and is in assist. Historically
it's always followed that exact definition, and so that when
a record occurs, we can very confidently say, hey, this
(06:34):
is an earned record. There's no subjectivity, there's no bias
on this. The aha moment that alerted vam Baumbo that
there was a potential for a scorekeeper bias was the
two thousand nine publication of an article in dead Spin
titled Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper, and this article basically
told the story of a Vancouver Grizzly scorekeeper who one
day decided to award a Lakers player. Surprisingly enough, point
(06:58):
three assists, and a lot of these assists were not
necessarily earned us it and the scorekeeper has this quote
in the article where he says, I wanted the numbers
to be meaningful and accurate, and I know they weren't,
and then he says, I was good at making them inaccurate.
And so I think, you know, there's a little bit
of frustration on his power where he's seeing something going
(07:21):
on and and he's kind of testing the limits of
how far this can actually got. So this scorekeeper took
it upon himself to award Van Exel the most assists
any player would have during the season, for no reason
other than he could. How many assists should Van Exell
have had that night? It's hard to say, partly because
(07:43):
the tape of that ninety seven game isn't on the internet.
So I tracked down one of the only people on
the planet who has a copy. I've always I've always
adored vent to Gen Bay basketball. One of my hobbies
is to collect all the recordings. This sort of the
way I learned so much about the game. That's Latvian journalist,
(08:05):
first name Rayness. I'll let him pronounce the last name
gets lots l A c I S. Lots is back
in Rainus. Inspired by the dead Spin article dug out
the old grainy VHS tape of the nineties seven Lakers
Grizzlies game, he wrote a blog post titled an Unnecessary
breakdown of Van Exel's fudged twenty three assists. So I
(08:30):
wanted to do an experiment and watched the game specifically
for this purpose. I sort of looked at it as
a fun exercise for me to write about his determination
on the actual number of assists van Exel should have
been awarded that day. I would say that fifteen would
be strict, and I can live with seventeen. According to Rayness,
van Exel's official assist total was inflated by between six
(08:50):
and eight, changing his passing performance from a nice day
at the office to the twelfth highest total in NBA
history at the time. So how did the score keeper
pull this off? The main one is the fact that
whenever Shack scored off his passed then it turned into
an assist. But you can have an assist on a
pass to the post in some circumstances, but other circumstances,
(09:14):
it seems a little ridiculous. Can you describe the kinds
of assists that van Exe was getting off shack passes?
It seemed like they were pushing the line of what
was fair. It seemed like a simply entry pass. I
believe there are three occasions of such places where he
simply entered the ball. You know, Shaq could bomb the ball,
look around like a few dribbles, score And I would
(09:37):
say that most people who either are in basketball have
played basketball would say that it's this sort of against
the spirits of what an assistance. He also found multiple
instances in which van Exe was credited with assists off
simple passes to guards on the wing that led eventually,
though not directly to a basket. Another player was simply
(09:57):
passing it to Kobe and he took like eight dribbles
and scored. So that also is kind of counterintuitive. At
least it shouldn't be an assist. And how do you
say in Latvian that assist was total bullshit? I would
say that most people would say thought psfl b guilly,
So it's time for a quick break. When we come back,
(10:21):
Courtney vandersluts record gets the Zipprouder treatment. I mean certainly
there's there's a bit of excitement when you see that
there is actually something here. When Matthew Van Baumo read
(10:42):
the Dead's Been Confessional article, rather than inspiring him to
reanalyze this one game, he had a different idea. So
my men talked in reading this article was just that
this is a really interesting topic and I couldn't find
anyone who had taken a real statistical view of this
and to see the potential impact something like this could
have on player statistics, and then basically just dope into
(11:06):
the data to try to see what I could find.
So he and his working partner built a model to
analyze all four and nine potential assists during the season,
so we actually we're able to look into the different
factors that actually impact what is or isn't an assist.
And so some of the things that tend to be
(11:26):
pretty relevant are how many dribbles a player took in
between the past and the basket, how much time allows
them between the past and the shot, how closely guarded
the players when they received the past. When they received
the past, do they immediately go to make a move
towards the basket or is there the pause? Is there
the job stepping kind of setting up their defenders to
(11:49):
time blow by them, and the number of dribbles to me,
seems like it's a big indicator. Can you make assumptions
about assist if there's a certain amount of dribbles or
is that's not clear cut either? I certainly don't think
it's clear cut. And the more dribbles you take, the
less likely a pass is to be a recorders an assist.
But there's no line where at three it drops off
(12:09):
a cliff in the likelihood. And I think the example
that I kind of always think of is if you
make a pass to someone and that brings them on
a fast break kind of ahead of a crowd, even
if there are three or four dribbles away from the room,
I still think that can be recorded an assist because
the past led to that scoring opportunity. And conversely, what
would be an example where there was zero or one dribbles,
(12:34):
but you would say, I don't think that's really an assist.
If you make a pass to someone and they hold
the ball for five six seconds their job stepping shop picking,
and then maybe they take a dribble and pull up,
that seems to me like something that might not be
worthy of an assist because the past didn't actually lead
to that advantage. Back to the judgment, what would be
(12:56):
the motivation for a scorekeeper to inflate this his totals
for his own team. I mean, what does he care
if Chris Paul has twelve assists or eight assists. I mean,
it doesn't affect him, really. I think the majority of
the biases are the inconsistency as we see, actually the
result of by subconscious bias, and that you don't actually
(13:19):
have statisticians who are deciding, oh, I'm gonna look and
hunt to give more assists to this player and that player.
I think for the most part, as humans were just biased.
And so if you're watching players and then and I know,
maybe you're from the city where you're working and you're
cheering for that team to do well, if there's a
fifty fifty call, you might just be likely to give
(13:39):
them the benefit of the doubt versus if they're not
on your team. And one of the other interesting parts
that actually came up in our research is that some
scorekeepers were just more likely to have given us this
to all players on either team, and so those scorekeepers
just had a looser definition of what an assist is
in general. It wasn't that they were biased for against someone,
(14:00):
they just had different definitions in their minds. I asked
Van Bauma if you'd take a look at vander Sleet's
record with me. I certainly won't claim to have an
expert opinion on this, but I'm happy to take a look.
I showed him the assist that felt questionable to me
for some Vambama was fine with the decision toward and assist,
others less so. On one play, a wing traces the
(14:22):
three point arc and receives the ball on the right side.
She jabs right, fakes left, rips the ball through, and
after two hard dribbles, turns the corner on her defender
and banks in a layout. This one feels like less
of an asist to me. There feels like there's more
of a delay between the catch and the drive. There's
kind of a pause and then the drive is made.
(14:42):
There's almost like two distinct components. So you're you're a
no on this one. I would lean know on this one.
On another play, vander Sleet leads a controlled four on
four fast break. She passes to a teammate just over
half court, who takes two hard dribbles to the center,
crosses over her defender to another dribble, then goes up
and under for a reverse layout. Maybe the fact that
(15:04):
it's in transition sort of adds a bit of grayness
to it, but it certainly seems like most of the
move towards the basketball sort of made after the past.
I'm winning a no on this one. On another play,
the power forward sets up on the left block, Vandersloot
bounces her a routine entry pass, the big backs downer
defender with a dribble, fakes a right spin before hitting
(15:26):
a jump hook over her left shoulder. A nice play,
but not an assist in my opinion. Yeah, I completely agree.
That's a great post move, and I think all the
credits should be given to the player. Well, this is
This is very interesting because the old assist record in
the w n B A was sixteen, set by a
woman named Tsha Panachera who played for the Sacramento Monarchs.
(15:49):
And she actually had sixteen twice in a game. And
so technically, if we're going by what we think is
the accurate tabulations, she should still have the What do
we do with this information? First, of all, the story
is just terrific UM, and I certainly don't want to
take away this USS record. So I understand what you're saying.
(16:11):
We feel bad. You know, someone's got a record. It's
a nice thing. But it does seem a little off
to me that this record was handed out. I'm not
accusing that the sky of Um cooking the books here.
I mean it's more than likely I would say that
that they just look at the box score and say, all,
(16:34):
that's a record. It wasn't like they're leaning on the
statistician to be like, hey, let's she's getting close. Let's
let's be the invisible hand here. What I'm saying is
when they look back at the assists, I think they
need to be accurate and say, you know what, based
on that reconsideration, I think um, I think the Sacramento
(16:55):
Monarchs player t Sha Panachero should keep the mark. I
think from my spect of what almost the ideal situation
would be is if everything was just directly comparable, whereas
this was just never a concern where there was a
hard definition of what is and is. Historically it's always
followed that exact definition, and so that when a record
(17:17):
occurs we can very confidently say, hey, this is an
earned record, there's no subjectivity, there's no bias on this.
Amending box scores after the fact is something occasionally done
in the NBA, and according to Rayness, it's often a
grassroot internet push serving as the driving force the sub
breddit community. They believe the general consensus there was that
(17:38):
some of the members who noticed a couple of ficial
assists actually helped NBA takeaway triple deuvils from Lebron from Janice.
I think it might have keptened a couple of other
times as well, but it's it's something that definitely has
seemingly occurred on some level. Taken away a triple double,
it's sort of, you know, takes away the fun from
(18:00):
the sports. But I think there are two ways to
look at it, and it's it's sort of beautiful that
in two thousand twenty the game is so connected than
anybody with with a computer and let a lot for
Bestball can get involved in the discussion and be a
part of the whole thing. Well, well you do you
touched on something that was my hesitancy when it comes
(18:20):
to looking at this w NBA record, What are your
thoughts on pointing out some irregularities and a record, and
it might take away a record from someone who thinks
they deserve it. This is actually the perfect example you
brought up, because there is seemingly no good from taking
away a beautiful record from somebody who has a backstory
(18:41):
about it. Obviously it is. It is a bit of
a bummer when a record doesn't turn out to be true,
But I would send the things that it is in
good fun. It is in in the nature of being
fanatic about this sport, about its athletes, so I don't
think anybody should take its wrong way. In some sense,
(19:03):
you can tell a story about the fact that it
most beautiful and even though it's not perfect, it doesn't
take anything away from the performance. Before letting him get
back to his actual job doing analysis for the Kings,
I asked Van BAUMO one last question. Is there an
argument that all this analysis is actually just great because
it creates more debate, more conversation, and when we're talking
(19:27):
about something like basketball, like is that ever a bad thing?
Don't a great question? I mean, I certainly have fun
discussing topics like that, and so to me, it's fun
that you know, you and I can watch something and
discuss it and have different opinions on it and figure
out how much an impact of these records in these
games and everything else. Though from a from a statistical
(19:47):
point of view, I certainly would rather everything be completely
consistent and in line. But from a basketball fan point
of view, I mean, I think one of the most
fun things that's just talking about the game, and this
is kind of given us an opportunity to do that.
(20:08):
All Right, that is it for today. I hope you
guys enjoyed the episode. A big thanks to Matthew Van
Baumo for taking the time to indulge me in this examination.
It totally changed the way I think about assists. And
thank you too, Rainus for speaking to me from Latvia
about his experience with the Van Excel tapes. If you're
enjoying this podcast, please take a minute to rate and
review on iTunes or follow along on Twitter and Instagram
(20:30):
at trickeration. And as we do at the end of
every episode, we check in with the legend Chris, Matt
Doug Russo, Chris, how do we do this week? Maddie,
Good job, keep up to good work. Thanks Chris. All right,
see you guys. Next week. Trickeration is a production of
my heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
(20:53):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Con
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to the Trickeration podcast, the number one podcast about
deception in sports. I'm your host, Matt and today we
are re examining a recent basketball record that maybe, just maybe,
definitely I don't think should have been handed out. Curious
(00:24):
to hear what you guys think after the episode, and
we got some great feedback on last week's episode, in
which I spoke with the instigator of the Great Potato
pick Off. Many people knew about this play, but we're
surprised to hear the details of how we pulled the
whole thing off and the fallout from it. So if
you haven't heard that one, make sure to go back
and check it out. And next week I will be
examining a state phishing record that may have been too
(00:46):
good to be true. But first this week, a closer
look at another fishy record. Enjoy. I think we maybe
go down the rabbit hole and now we have to
watch the previous record and see if there's any assists
there we need to take away. Back on August one,
(01:07):
Courtney Vanderslout, the point guard for the w NBA Chicago Sky,
dished out a record eighteen assists in a win over
the Indiana Fever, topping the previous mark of sixteen by
Titia Pennacciero, said the announcer at the time, quote an
unforgettable moment in w NBA history and making the performance
(01:28):
even sweeter, the record breaking assist went to Vanderslout's wife
Ali Quickly, as far as sports moments go, this one
was tough to beat. As a fan of great passers
and not knowing much about Vanderslout, I went back and
watched the assists and I had two reactions. One, Courtney
Vanderslout is a terrific passer, and two, there is no
(01:49):
way she should have been credited with eighteen assists in
this game. To my untrained eye, this stat line seemed
totally bogus, But what do I know? So I went
to the foremost expert in this kind of thing, Sacramento
Kings senior analyst Matthew Van Baummel, someone who has spent
more time than anyone analyzing the thin line between assists
and just regular passes. I think you're the first person
(02:11):
that's ever actually officially called me the foremost experts. So
I'll definitely take that. But Basically, I've done a decent
amount of work into looking at the subjectivity of recorded
statistics in basketball and what does that mean for people
who have no idea what we're talking about. Yeah, So
the prime example is the assist. If you're watching at
(02:32):
home and someone makes a pass and then the guy
takes a dribble before he shoots and it goes in,
you might think it's an assistem. I think it's not
an assist, right, because there was kind of this gray
area of where an assist starts and stops. It's not
like a made basket where it's very obvious it goes
in or it doesn't. And so the people who are
officially recording the statistics for the game have to make
(02:54):
a judgment call in a lot of these cases on
whether to score something as an assist or not. And
so I looking too, you know, if you have a
human element involved in these decisions, is their potential for
inconsistencies or biases to be involved? What about this matter?
Do you? I mean, who cares about the subjectivity of assists?
Why is that even a thing to worry about? Or
(03:15):
is that a silly question to ask an analyst that
might be a silly questions analysts. You know, this isn't
the pre eminent issue in sports analytics. This doesn't affect
who wins or loses this game. But I do think
it has a decent impact in that we use statistics
to evaluate players. I mean, certainly we use it as
(03:35):
analysts and our jobs, but even in the media, a
fan watching at home, you know, we quote these statistics
and we use that, and that influences how we see players.
And I think our perception of players has a lot
of impact. You know, team's perception of players obviously impact
salaries and team composition and construction, and media obviously has
an impact on end of season awards, and even fans
(03:57):
on just the popularity of a player. And so I
think it's important to sort of look at these building
blocks of how we're analyzing these players and at least
know what's going into them. And before we dive into
the data, I think we should established for listeners, what
is an assist I mean, that's a great question. All
(04:19):
the definitions that I've ever come across involved either some
warding of in the judgment of the scorekeeper or some
warding of a past that directly leads to a basket,
and so there is no heart and past rule like
you can only take this many dribbles, this many steps,
as much time can occur. There's subjectivity baked right into
(04:42):
the definition. And why is it a problem that there's
judgment involved. I mean, in other sports we allow umpires
to use judgment for balls and strikes, A ref uses
judgment on pass interference. What's the problem with having a
scorekeeper using judgment? Certainly judgment as an aspect of sports.
I think ideally, though, you don't want human biases impacting
(05:05):
the results of anything in sports. And so that one
of the interesting aspects of these box score statistics that
you have. Each team hires their own team of scorekeepers
to keep track of these statistics. And so if you
know the scorekeeper for one team, there is a lot
more generous and handing out assists for the scorekeeper and
(05:27):
another team, then the players on those teams are going
to have drastically different numbers, even if they're performing at
very similar levels. And then the other word you pointed
out in this definition of the assist is directly and
assist is awarded only if the last players passed contributed
directly to a made basket. How are we supposed to
know what directly constitutes? So in my understanding, there is
(05:51):
some formal training that the official statisticians go under, and
so I assume in that there's there's some sort of
video study aspect or examples given, and then they kind
of just have to build up this identifying muscle, if
you will, where they can tell what an assist is
or isn't. But you are watching at home, I mean,
(06:12):
I think everyone has slightly different definitions. I think from
my perspective, what almost the ideal situation would be is
is if everything was just directly comparable, there was a
hard definition of what is and is in assist. Historically
it's always followed that exact definition, and so that when
a record occurs, we can very confidently say, hey, this
(06:34):
is an earned record. There's no subjectivity, there's no bias
on this. The aha moment that alerted vam Baumbo that
there was a potential for a scorekeeper bias was the
two thousand nine publication of an article in dead Spin
titled Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper, and this article basically
told the story of a Vancouver Grizzly scorekeeper who one
day decided to award a Lakers player. Surprisingly enough, point
(06:58):
three assists, and a lot of these assists were not
necessarily earned us it and the scorekeeper has this quote
in the article where he says, I wanted the numbers
to be meaningful and accurate, and I know they weren't,
and then he says, I was good at making them inaccurate.
And so I think, you know, there's a little bit
of frustration on his power where he's seeing something going
(07:21):
on and and he's kind of testing the limits of
how far this can actually got. So this scorekeeper took
it upon himself to award Van Exel the most assists
any player would have during the season, for no reason
other than he could. How many assists should Van Exell
have had that night? It's hard to say, partly because
(07:43):
the tape of that ninety seven game isn't on the internet.
So I tracked down one of the only people on
the planet who has a copy. I've always I've always
adored vent to Gen Bay basketball. One of my hobbies
is to collect all the recordings. This sort of the
way I learned so much about the game. That's Latvian journalist,
(08:05):
first name Rayness. I'll let him pronounce the last name
gets lots l A c I S. Lots is back
in Rainus. Inspired by the dead Spin article dug out
the old grainy VHS tape of the nineties seven Lakers
Grizzlies game, he wrote a blog post titled an Unnecessary
breakdown of Van Exel's fudged twenty three assists. So I
(08:30):
wanted to do an experiment and watched the game specifically
for this purpose. I sort of looked at it as
a fun exercise for me to write about his determination
on the actual number of assists van Exel should have
been awarded that day. I would say that fifteen would
be strict, and I can live with seventeen. According to Rayness,
van Exel's official assist total was inflated by between six
(08:50):
and eight, changing his passing performance from a nice day
at the office to the twelfth highest total in NBA
history at the time. So how did the score keeper
pull this off? The main one is the fact that
whenever Shack scored off his passed then it turned into
an assist. But you can have an assist on a
pass to the post in some circumstances, but other circumstances,
(09:14):
it seems a little ridiculous. Can you describe the kinds
of assists that van Exe was getting off shack passes?
It seemed like they were pushing the line of what
was fair. It seemed like a simply entry pass. I
believe there are three occasions of such places where he
simply entered the ball. You know, Shaq could bomb the ball,
look around like a few dribbles, score And I would
(09:37):
say that most people who either are in basketball have
played basketball would say that it's this sort of against
the spirits of what an assistance. He also found multiple
instances in which van Exe was credited with assists off
simple passes to guards on the wing that led eventually,
though not directly to a basket. Another player was simply
(09:57):
passing it to Kobe and he took like eight dribbles
and scored. So that also is kind of counterintuitive. At
least it shouldn't be an assist. And how do you
say in Latvian that assist was total bullshit? I would
say that most people would say thought psfl b guilly,
So it's time for a quick break. When we come back,
(10:21):
Courtney vandersluts record gets the Zipprouder treatment. I mean certainly
there's there's a bit of excitement when you see that
there is actually something here. When Matthew Van Baumo read
(10:42):
the Dead's Been Confessional article, rather than inspiring him to
reanalyze this one game, he had a different idea. So
my men talked in reading this article was just that
this is a really interesting topic and I couldn't find
anyone who had taken a real statistical view of this
and to see the potential impact something like this could
have on player statistics, and then basically just dope into
(11:06):
the data to try to see what I could find.
So he and his working partner built a model to
analyze all four and nine potential assists during the season,
so we actually we're able to look into the different
factors that actually impact what is or isn't an assist.
And so some of the things that tend to be
(11:26):
pretty relevant are how many dribbles a player took in
between the past and the basket, how much time allows
them between the past and the shot, how closely guarded
the players when they received the past. When they received
the past, do they immediately go to make a move
towards the basket or is there the pause? Is there
the job stepping kind of setting up their defenders to
(11:49):
time blow by them, and the number of dribbles to me,
seems like it's a big indicator. Can you make assumptions
about assist if there's a certain amount of dribbles or
is that's not clear cut either? I certainly don't think
it's clear cut. And the more dribbles you take, the
less likely a pass is to be a recorders an assist.
But there's no line where at three it drops off
(12:09):
a cliff in the likelihood. And I think the example
that I kind of always think of is if you
make a pass to someone and that brings them on
a fast break kind of ahead of a crowd, even
if there are three or four dribbles away from the room,
I still think that can be recorded an assist because
the past led to that scoring opportunity. And conversely, what
would be an example where there was zero or one dribbles,
(12:34):
but you would say, I don't think that's really an assist.
If you make a pass to someone and they hold
the ball for five six seconds their job stepping shop picking,
and then maybe they take a dribble and pull up,
that seems to me like something that might not be
worthy of an assist because the past didn't actually lead
to that advantage. Back to the judgment, what would be
(12:56):
the motivation for a scorekeeper to inflate this his totals
for his own team. I mean, what does he care
if Chris Paul has twelve assists or eight assists. I mean,
it doesn't affect him, really. I think the majority of
the biases are the inconsistency as we see, actually the
result of by subconscious bias, and that you don't actually
(13:19):
have statisticians who are deciding, oh, I'm gonna look and
hunt to give more assists to this player and that player.
I think for the most part, as humans were just biased.
And so if you're watching players and then and I know,
maybe you're from the city where you're working and you're
cheering for that team to do well, if there's a
fifty fifty call, you might just be likely to give
(13:39):
them the benefit of the doubt versus if they're not
on your team. And one of the other interesting parts
that actually came up in our research is that some
scorekeepers were just more likely to have given us this
to all players on either team, and so those scorekeepers
just had a looser definition of what an assist is
in general. It wasn't that they were biased for against someone,
(14:00):
they just had different definitions in their minds. I asked
Van Bauma if you'd take a look at vander Sleet's
record with me. I certainly won't claim to have an
expert opinion on this, but I'm happy to take a look.
I showed him the assist that felt questionable to me
for some Vambama was fine with the decision toward and assist,
others less so. On one play, a wing traces the
(14:22):
three point arc and receives the ball on the right side.
She jabs right, fakes left, rips the ball through, and
after two hard dribbles, turns the corner on her defender
and banks in a layout. This one feels like less
of an asist to me. There feels like there's more
of a delay between the catch and the drive. There's
kind of a pause and then the drive is made.
(14:42):
There's almost like two distinct components. So you're you're a
no on this one. I would lean know on this one.
On another play, vander Sleet leads a controlled four on
four fast break. She passes to a teammate just over
half court, who takes two hard dribbles to the center,
crosses over her defender to another dribble, then goes up
and under for a reverse layout. Maybe the fact that
(15:04):
it's in transition sort of adds a bit of grayness
to it, but it certainly seems like most of the
move towards the basketball sort of made after the past.
I'm winning a no on this one. On another play,
the power forward sets up on the left block, Vandersloot
bounces her a routine entry pass, the big backs downer
defender with a dribble, fakes a right spin before hitting
(15:26):
a jump hook over her left shoulder. A nice play,
but not an assist in my opinion. Yeah, I completely agree.
That's a great post move, and I think all the
credits should be given to the player. Well, this is
This is very interesting because the old assist record in
the w n B A was sixteen, set by a
woman named Tsha Panachera who played for the Sacramento Monarchs.
(15:49):
And she actually had sixteen twice in a game. And
so technically, if we're going by what we think is
the accurate tabulations, she should still have the What do
we do with this information? First, of all, the story
is just terrific UM, and I certainly don't want to
take away this USS record. So I understand what you're saying.
(16:11):
We feel bad. You know, someone's got a record. It's
a nice thing. But it does seem a little off
to me that this record was handed out. I'm not
accusing that the sky of Um cooking the books here.
I mean it's more than likely I would say that
that they just look at the box score and say, all,
(16:34):
that's a record. It wasn't like they're leaning on the
statistician to be like, hey, let's she's getting close. Let's
let's be the invisible hand here. What I'm saying is
when they look back at the assists, I think they
need to be accurate and say, you know what, based
on that reconsideration, I think um, I think the Sacramento
(16:55):
Monarchs player t Sha Panachero should keep the mark. I
think from my spect of what almost the ideal situation
would be is if everything was just directly comparable, whereas
this was just never a concern where there was a
hard definition of what is and is. Historically it's always
followed that exact definition, and so that when a record
(17:17):
occurs we can very confidently say, hey, this is an
earned record, there's no subjectivity, there's no bias on this.
Amending box scores after the fact is something occasionally done
in the NBA, and according to Rayness, it's often a
grassroot internet push serving as the driving force the sub
breddit community. They believe the general consensus there was that
(17:38):
some of the members who noticed a couple of ficial
assists actually helped NBA takeaway triple deuvils from Lebron from Janice.
I think it might have keptened a couple of other
times as well, but it's it's something that definitely has
seemingly occurred on some level. Taken away a triple double,
it's sort of, you know, takes away the fun from
(18:00):
the sports. But I think there are two ways to
look at it, and it's it's sort of beautiful that
in two thousand twenty the game is so connected than
anybody with with a computer and let a lot for
Bestball can get involved in the discussion and be a
part of the whole thing. Well, well you do you
touched on something that was my hesitancy when it comes
(18:20):
to looking at this w NBA record, What are your
thoughts on pointing out some irregularities and a record, and
it might take away a record from someone who thinks
they deserve it. This is actually the perfect example you
brought up, because there is seemingly no good from taking
away a beautiful record from somebody who has a backstory
(18:41):
about it. Obviously it is. It is a bit of
a bummer when a record doesn't turn out to be true,
But I would send the things that it is in
good fun. It is in in the nature of being
fanatic about this sport, about its athletes, so I don't
think anybody should take its wrong way. In some sense,
(19:03):
you can tell a story about the fact that it
most beautiful and even though it's not perfect, it doesn't
take anything away from the performance. Before letting him get
back to his actual job doing analysis for the Kings,
I asked Van BAUMO one last question. Is there an
argument that all this analysis is actually just great because
it creates more debate, more conversation, and when we're talking
(19:27):
about something like basketball, like is that ever a bad thing?
Don't a great question? I mean, I certainly have fun
discussing topics like that, and so to me, it's fun
that you know, you and I can watch something and
discuss it and have different opinions on it and figure
out how much an impact of these records in these
games and everything else. Though from a from a statistical
(19:47):
point of view, I certainly would rather everything be completely
consistent and in line. But from a basketball fan point
of view, I mean, I think one of the most
fun things that's just talking about the game, and this
is kind of given us an opportunity to do that.
(20:08):
All Right, that is it for today. I hope you
guys enjoyed the episode. A big thanks to Matthew Van
Baumo for taking the time to indulge me in this examination.
It totally changed the way I think about assists. And
thank you too, Rainus for speaking to me from Latvia
about his experience with the Van Excel tapes. If you're
enjoying this podcast, please take a minute to rate and
review on iTunes or follow along on Twitter and Instagram
(20:30):
at trickeration. And as we do at the end of
every episode, we check in with the legend Chris, Matt
Doug Russo, Chris, how do we do this week? Maddie,
Good job, keep up to good work. Thanks Chris. All right,
see you guys. Next week. Trickeration is a production of
my heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
(20:53):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Con
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