For years there have been many guys, at any level of basketball, whether it be the NBA or even your local gym that will help a team win in non-traditional ways. Ways that don’t show up in a box score.
Diving for a loose ball, stopping a fast break, helping on defense, setting screens to get a shooter open and taking charges have always been a part of the game, but until now there has never been a way to measure or track these hustle plays.
The NBA experimented with a formula to track these hustle stats during the 2015 Las Vegas NBA Summer League and it turned out to be very popular with NBA front office people so they have decided to do the same during the 2016 playoffs.
The league will have trained statisticians, in their New Jersey replay center, who will analyze games and track the following actions by a player: contesting two point and three point shots, charges taken, loose ball recoveries, pass deflections and “screen assists” which are points scored as the result of a screen to free a player.
Fans will have the opportunity to dissect these new stats hours after each playoff game on NBA.com
Some of these actions have been basic principles of winning basketball since the game was invented and it will be fun to finally measure how players excel for their teams in these under-appreciated ways.
Who knows maybe in 10 years Jay Bilas will be raving about a player’s screen assists as well as their wingspan on draft night.
