Post by eric on May 23, 2016 13:38:31 GMT -6
I believe that playmaking is at the most fundamental level a binary, innate talent: either people can set up teammates or they can't. That talent can be nurtured or neglected just like a seed, but no amount of nurturing can grow a plant without a seed. I decided to see if I could demonstrate this empirically by looking at every player-season in NBA history that qualified for the minutes played per game leaderboards. In recent times this means 70 games played or 2000 minutes played, and these values are reduced in step with the shorter seasons of the past. This gave me 10,067 player-seasons. I then restricted myself to players who had five such seasons, which gave me a pool of 950 players.
I then found each player's maximum and minimum season values for true shot attempts per assist. For this past season, the three lowest and highest were...
Andrew Wiggins' values so happen to be 7.9 in his first year and 9.4 in his second year.
Thus, I looked for all players in the 950 whose maximum tsa/ast was 9+, and found 342.
Of these 342, only 37 ever posted at least one season of 4- tsa/ast.
Of these 37, only 4 ever posted at least one season of 5+ ast/36:
Rick Barry started his NBA career as a massive ball hog with 10+ tsa/ast. When he went to the ABA his sharing improved dramatically to ~5, and continued past the 4s when he returned to the NBA. Whether this was a conscious choice on his part, the result of multiple knee injuries, or a reaction to enormously negative public reaction is anyone's guess, but the change did happen.
Wilt Chamberlain has the biggest swing between hog and passer in NBA history, going from scoring 50 points a game to leading the league in assists with over 700. No one else has scored even 40 a game, no other center has been even top three in assists or had even 500. He treated the NBA like a video game before there were video games. He could do whatever he wanted... except win ⌐■_■
Sam Lacey is a somewhat more obscure player who came into the league as Slammin' Sam, your typical black hole big with a 10 to 1 tsa/ast ratio. (The "slam" refers to blocks, not dunks, as his 42 FG% attests.) By 1975 he had blossomed into an 11 pts 14 reb 5 ast per game player and received his only All-Star recognition. Kareem would match those numbers the next year. No one has since. (The closest are Charles Barkley who fell 9 assists short with 23/14/4.9 in 1987 and Kevin Garnett who fell 9 rebounds short with 24/13.9/5 in 2004.) He went on to post what I'm reasonably sure is the lowest tsa/ast season for a center ever with a 1.5 in his last year of 1981.
Mickey Johnson is an even more obscure player who followed a similar path, though not as extreme. After the Rubber Band Man averaged 20/20s at college basketball hotbed Aurora he went on to post fabulous advanced metrics in the NBA, but unfortunately they wouldn't be invented for another twenty five years so he bounced around and didn't do anything of note.
.
Another phenomenon is that three of these players' increases in playmaking were well underway in their third season. Barry as mentioned went from ten his rookie year to five his third, Sam went from ten to six, and Mickey went from nine to five. This makes me very interested to see if Wiggins can significantly bump his assist totals this coming year. Based on history it's already a 100 to 1 shot he ever becomes a playmaker. A stagnant year (or worse, continuing on his current hog trend) would seem to me to put all doubt to rest.
I then found each player's maximum and minimum season values for true shot attempts per assist. For this past season, the three lowest and highest were...
1.01 Rajon Rondo
1.10 Ricky Rubio
1.16 Pablo Prigioni
19.7 Andre Drummond
25.1 Enes Kanter
27.6 Hassan WhitesideAndrew Wiggins' values so happen to be 7.9 in his first year and 9.4 in his second year.
Thus, I looked for all players in the 950 whose maximum tsa/ast was 9+, and found 342.
Of these 342, only 37 ever posted at least one season of 4- tsa/ast.
Of these 37, only 4 ever posted at least one season of 5+ ast/36:
Rick Barry started his NBA career as a massive ball hog with 10+ tsa/ast. When he went to the ABA his sharing improved dramatically to ~5, and continued past the 4s when he returned to the NBA. Whether this was a conscious choice on his part, the result of multiple knee injuries, or a reaction to enormously negative public reaction is anyone's guess, but the change did happen.
Wilt Chamberlain has the biggest swing between hog and passer in NBA history, going from scoring 50 points a game to leading the league in assists with over 700. No one else has scored even 40 a game, no other center has been even top three in assists or had even 500. He treated the NBA like a video game before there were video games. He could do whatever he wanted... except win ⌐■_■
Sam Lacey is a somewhat more obscure player who came into the league as Slammin' Sam, your typical black hole big with a 10 to 1 tsa/ast ratio. (The "slam" refers to blocks, not dunks, as his 42 FG% attests.) By 1975 he had blossomed into an 11 pts 14 reb 5 ast per game player and received his only All-Star recognition. Kareem would match those numbers the next year. No one has since. (The closest are Charles Barkley who fell 9 assists short with 23/14/4.9 in 1987 and Kevin Garnett who fell 9 rebounds short with 24/13.9/5 in 2004.) He went on to post what I'm reasonably sure is the lowest tsa/ast season for a center ever with a 1.5 in his last year of 1981.
Mickey Johnson is an even more obscure player who followed a similar path, though not as extreme. After the Rubber Band Man averaged 20/20s at college basketball hotbed Aurora he went on to post fabulous advanced metrics in the NBA, but unfortunately they wouldn't be invented for another twenty five years so he bounced around and didn't do anything of note.
.
Another phenomenon is that three of these players' increases in playmaking were well underway in their third season. Barry as mentioned went from ten his rookie year to five his third, Sam went from ten to six, and Mickey went from nine to five. This makes me very interested to see if Wiggins can significantly bump his assist totals this coming year. Based on history it's already a 100 to 1 shot he ever becomes a playmaker. A stagnant year (or worse, continuing on his current hog trend) would seem to me to put all doubt to rest.
