Last week the NBA stripped LeBron James of his historic triple double at Madison Square Garden. The reason: a rebound that shouldn't have been. What if he would have gotten an assist taken away, instead? How does the NBA determine what an assist is?
In 1990 Hakeem Olajuwon racked up 29 points, 18 rebounds, 10 assists, and 11 blocks in a game against Golden State, earning himself with the extremely rare quadruple double. After the game, however, the league looked further into it and determined that Olajuwon had only 9 assists, which downgraded it to a triple double ("Dream" came back a few games later and got a quadruple double, anyway, just to rub it in Commissioner David Stern's face). Whereas a rebound call would be a little more objective (although the LeBron takeaway last Wednesday was crap), assists aren't as easy to judge.
If you go to the NBA rule book which is found online, you hardly read anything substantive on how assists are executed. Same goes for Wikpedia and WikiAnswers. So I went here and found the definition in the official NCAA 2007 stat's manual.
A player is credited with an assist when the player makes, in the judgment of the statistician, the principal pass contributing directly to a field goal (or an awarded score of two or three points)… Philosophy. An assist should be more than a routine pass that just happens to be followed by a field goal. It should be a conscious effort to find the open player or to help a player work free…
Still pretty subjective but at least they try to keep a standard throughout the league.
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