method for estimating "assist attempts"?

[deepak]

Is there a decent way of estimating, based on available public data, "assist attempts" for a player? By this, I mean how often a player's pass leads directly to a shot, whether that shot is made, missed, or results in free throws.

[edkupfer]

There is some discussion of the topic in this thread:

p1 http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/APBRme ... @t=68.html
p2 http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/APBRme ... 26%20.html

and this thread

http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/APBRme ... 57%20.html

[rshea]

deepak,

You could try contacting STATS LLC. With their SportVu camera tracking system they can optically track passes and so they could track passes that lead to shots.

[deepak]

Thanks for the responses.

Dan's formula implies that teammates will score just as efficiently regardless of whether the shot attempt is assisted. So while his approach might be helpful for estimating true "possession usage" for passers, it doesn't shed any light on the extent to which a given passer is improving the shooting percentages of his teammates.

I guess what I am really interested in is a method for estimating the TS% of shots created by a player via the pass. Can a decent approximation for this be arrived at using the shot distribution of shots the player assisted on?

[DSMok1]

This should help to some extent: http://82games.com/assisted.htm . It's a tough question.