What counts as an assist, and who decides

An assist is credited to the player whose pass directly leads to a made basket. There is no measurement involved. A statistician at the table watches the play and decides, which is why the same sequence can be scored differently in two different halls.

The rough working rule is that the pass must create the scoring opportunity rather than merely precede it. A pass to a shooter who catches and shoots is an assist. A pass to a player who takes four dribbles, steps back and creates his own shot is not, even though the ball came from somewhere. One or two dribbles between the catch and the shot is the grey zone, and that is where scorers differ.

A few situations have firmer conventions. A pass that leads to a foul and free throws earns nothing, however good the pass was, because no field goal was made. A pass to a cutter who is fouled and scores anyway usually does count, since the basket went in. Inbound passes count when the receiver scores immediately. A deflection that happens to reach a teammate does not, because a pass has to be intentional.

The hockey assist, the pass before the pass, is not recorded in a standard box score. It is often the pass that actually broke the defence, which is one reason the assist column undersells certain players. Some detailed statistics packages track potential assists, meaning passes that would have been assists had the shot gone in, and that number is a better guide to a player's passing volume than the official column.

Team context inflates or deflates the number heavily. A guard playing beside good shooters will collect assists on catch-and-shoot attempts that another guard, playing beside teammates who need two dribbles to get organised, will never be credited with. The pass can be identical. So an assist total tells you about a player and his teammates jointly, not about him alone.

The practical way to use it in a single game is as a ratio rather than a total. Assists set against turnovers says something about decision making: a handler with nine assists and six turnovers is gambling, and one with seven and one is not. Compare that to how often the ball was actually in his hands, and you have a reasonable picture without needing anything the box score does not print.