That's a nice idea - but not really as helpful as knowing who you assist to and and how people shoot from where you assist to them. For example - it gives a bigger weight to assists at the rim - which is hard to do in Portland as the team does not really have too many close to the rim scorers - Oden is out, Joel is out and the other two good "at the rim" scorers we have - are JB and Roy - JB clearly can not assist himself and Roy creates his rim scoring from the dribble. Add the "game plan" and it is really hard to tell how much this stat makes sense - Dirk Diggler is one of the best shooters in the world from the 18ft or so range - if the game plan calls for Kidd to give Dirk the ball there - does it really make sense to "punish" him doing so? Interesting stat - but I am not sure how much thought was really given to it... A more interesting stat, even without knowing the game plan, would be the same but for open shots from these areas - does not matter if they go in or not. Is it really the fault of the PG if he gives a good pass to someone that stinks at a specific shot? Seems like a half baked idea, at best. As for the conclusion - I do not think anyone is surprised that Sergio is better at assists than JB. Not something surprising or an insight we did not know before.
Here's a followup that thinks through the same impression I had: http://thenullhypodermic.blogspot.com/2010/03/unifying-statistics.html . It would be nice if assists could tell you if the passer got the ball to a player in a spot he had a good chance to score from. Drive and dish is one way, but what about someone like Stockton who knew where Jeff Malone and Bryon Russell could hit from? The original post isn't so good, for example, if you want to say a 3 point attempt is better than a midrange, even if the pass is to someone like Kevin Garnett.
