Hassan Whiteside’s Statistical Outlier and Other Playmaking Notes

Hassan Whiteside’s performance in Denver on Friday night was both spectacular and unusual. He put up a triple double including 19 points, 17 rebounds and 11 blocks rather than the usual assists. Well, usual for most triple doubles, but we’ll get there. This was only the third triple double featuring blocks in the last three seasons. Whiteside is responsible for all three. But that’s not the unusual part. Whiteside also had two assists. The 17th and 18th of his career. Total. Only one time before last night had he even reached two assists in a single game. In fact, during his Miami career, only 13 times has he had as many as 2 potential assists in games.[1. Incidentally, prior to Friday, the Heat had connected on only 16 of 47 of shots coming directly from Whiteside passes, possibly indicating the sheer surprise of receiving the ball throws off their shooting rhythms. Or it could be just a tiny sample. You be the judge.]

Which got me to thinking. Whiteside is notoriously passing-averse, but how true is the reputation? Using SportVU data, I think I’ve found an answer. Combining time of possession with assist chances, Whiteside averages the fewest assist chances[1. Defined here as Potential Assists plus Free Throw Assists.] relative to time of possession of any player in the league:

The average NBA player dishes out an assist chance once about every 26.5 seconds of touch time, per SportVU data. As shown above, Whiteside takes almost twice as long. By comparison, the players who have the shortest touch time per assist chance represent some of the better playmaking frontcourt players in the NBA:

The fascinating thing is, Whiteside taking nearly a minute with the ball per assist chance actually represents a significant, strike that massive improvement from 2014/15, when during his breakout in Miami, he averaged almost 150 seconds, almost 2.5 minutes, of possession time between assist chances. He’s improved enormously, and is still probably the least effective passer in the NBA. That apparent contradiction is just one of many with Whiteside, who by the numbers is an elite or near elite rim protector, yet the Heat often defend better with him off the floor. Well beyond the scope of this article, but what kind of contract he receives this summer[2. And from whom, considering that through the vagaries of his contract status, Miami has only limited ability to re-sign him over the salary cap, usually one of the bigger clubs in a team’s bag for retaining it’s own free agents.] is one of the more fascinating subplots of the 2016 offseason.

In any event, moving beyond merely Whiteside, this metric of playmaking – time per assist chance – shows some clear positional effects, as is demonstrated to a degree by the presence of so many “scoring point guard” types on the “worst of” list. The role of initiating an offense, from bringing the ball up court, to directing traffic when and if an offense stalls in the halfcourt simply takes too much with the ball. Players with primary ball-handling duties are simply unlikely to be exceptional performers on this measure relative to other roles:

Another thing to note is this measure is heavily context dependent. Among the players who have “declined” the most from 2014/15 – players who have seen their time per assist chance rise, three[Luis Scola, Cory Joseph and DeMarre Carroll.] of the top eight are players newly arrived in Toronto, where the Raps are last in potential assists and 28th in potential assist rate[2. Potential assists / FGA.]. Meanwhile, two of the players with the largest[2. Non-Whiteside Division.] improvements are players that have left the Raptors in Greivis Vasquez and Lou Williams, himself not in a passing paradise with the Lakers in Los Angeles.

As with many SportVU-derived metrics, these results are equivocal, and often describe style as much as achievement. Toronto has managed to be perfectly effective offensively[3. 3rd last year 6th thus far in 2015/16 by NBA.com’s calculation of ORTG.] despite slow-moving sets where the ball tends to find and stick in the hands of either Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan, whereas teams like Boston, Charlotte and Orlando all have higher than average potential assist rates and relatively poor offenses.

But controlling for this context can illustrate certain differences within a team. For example, to return to a favorite topic, Ricky Rubio generates an assist chance once every 24.5 seconds with the ball (more than average for any player, well better than PG average), whereas Zach LaVine, he of the controversial “try him at point guard” experiment takes 39 seconds to do so, which at very least matches the eye test of the kludginess that takes over the Minnesota offense when Rubio leaves and LaVine enters. To that end, I’ve added seconds of possession per assist chances as well as seconds of possession per turnover to the Usage and Possession statistics page.

Oh, and Whiteside? Back to zero assists in Miami’s loss to Oklahoma City on Sunday.