Screening the Assists

By MrTrpleDouble10

The NBA is in the midst of a statistical revolution of sorts.  More and more we’re reading about certain organizations implementing a new metric that would make Einstein proud.  In Saturday’s Boston Herald, Doc Rivers may have dropped a subtle hint as to what one of those metrics might be: “Pick Assists.”  Doc praised Kendrick Perkins for his ‘pick assists’ following their 122-103 throttling over the Indiana Pacers.  That got me thinking, which is always dangerous.

While it’s one thing to dominate a Pacer team that has packed it in since mid-December, it’s another thing to replicate that performance against the team that most have picked to either make to the Finals, or win the title: the Cleveland Cavaliers.  I kept track of how many screens each player set, and how many of these directly led to a basket.   I am by no means John Hollinger, Wayne Winston or the President of the Elias Sports Bureau, so don’t take this final tally as anything close to official.  But it does point out a few interesting aspects of what their game plan was against the Cavs.

*Led to 2 free throws

One thing that jumps out to me is how active KG is on offense by setting all those screens.  He routinely gets praised for his invaluable presence on the defensive end, but clearly, he’s just as active on offense setting screens.  I was surprised at how many Glen Davis and Rasheed Wallace actually set.  But one thing is clear: against the Cavs they were more focused on going to isolation plays in the post.  Doc said as much in his post game quotes.

While it’s uncertain to qualify exactly what a “Pick Assist” is, you can spot out some obvious ones.  The Celtics didn’t have many against the Cavs and a lot of their screens were executed about as aggressively as Pau Gasol’s low-post defense.  Translation: they were soft, or just flailed an elbow or gave up on picking off the man with slow legs.  Here are a couple of obvious examples:

This is an obvious one as we see KG screen Ray Allen’s man, Anthony Parker, allowing Ray to take an uncontested baseline three.  KG actually screens both Parker and his own man, Anderson Varejao, so I wonder if this could actually count as two assists on one play within the eyes of the Celtics’ staff!

This example isn’t as clean, but Glen Davis screens old friend Delonte West just enough to allow Rondo to blow by the rest of the Cavs defense for a lay-up.  The Celtics didn’t run many of these plays effectively on Sunday.  They opted for a heavy dosage of low-post isolation plays figuring the Cavs front line was too small without Shaq and Big Z roaming the paint.  It worked in the sense that a lot of their attempts were good, clean looks.  The failure came in making the shots then failing to rebound AND guard the Cavs in transition.

So there you have a quick snapshot of what Doc may have meant by “Pick Assists.”  It was an interesting tidbit he dropped to reporters, along with the “50-50” stat.  Too bad the Celtics can’t play teams like the Pistons or Pacers in round 1 of the playoffs.  In that case they wouldn’t even need to keep track of any advanced stats and simply enjoy the old-school shellacking.