The Assist Doesn't Record the Catch

Stop the video when the ball reaches Courtney Williams. Not at the shot. At the catch. Mid-June, Lynx and Aces. Olivia Miles has beaten Chelsea Gray and ended up in the air near the rim with A'ja Wilson and two more Las Vegas defenders around her. A direct pass to Williams is available. Miles puts the ball into the floor instead, and Williams shoots an open three. Seerat Sohi, writing in The Ringer, reads the bounce as buying another beat of space, and I think that is right. The reason to stop at the catch is that everything worth judging has already happened. Williams was moving toward a shot. When the ball arrived, the shot was still there. I cannot tell you what the direct pass would have done, because that possession does not exist. What I can say is what the bounce did: it went under the reach and arrived while Williams could still do the thing she had already started. Coaches have taught the basic idea for decades. Get the ball to the shooter's pocket. Let her catch in rhythm. A pass that arrives high, low or late can turn the same opening into a different shot. That part matters because the public record is much better at telling us whether the pass completed than what it left the receiver with. An assist requires the pass to lead to a made shot. Tracking data gets closer. Potential assists count passes that lead quickly to shots, whether the shot falls or not. Other tracking measures capture secondary assists and passes that lead to shooting fouls. What none of those public numbers tells us is whether the receiver's next action became harder. A pass can arrive a beat late after the defender has re-attached. It can pull a shooter out of her footwork. It can make a moving player decelerate, turn or reset. If the pass still completes, the record usually treats it the same as one that arrives exactly where and when the receiver needs it. In the WNBA, the public record appears thinner still. The league's public leaderboards center on traditional box-score statistics, and I could not find a published passing-tracking page comparable to what is available elsewhere. The league's newer player-tracking work does point toward the same underlying question. Shot Difficulty estimates expected shooting percentage at release using things such as the shooter's speed, body orientation and the proximity of the nearest defender's hand. It does not evaluate the pass. But it does treat the shooter's physical state when the shot begins as part of what determines the quality of the attempt. That is the part I care about here. I have written before about advantage creation and about the assist arriving several decisions after the advantage began. That piece looked backward from the assist. This one looks at what the pass leaves behind. Here is the second possession. Late July, Lynx and Tempo. Miles gets a deflection, Natasha Howard pulls the ball down and returns it, and Miles releases a pass on the move, between her legs, that reaches Kayla McBride trailing into the right wing. McBride shoots an above-the-break three. The between-the-legs pass is why the clip traveled. Watch McBride instead. She is running into the shot. A ball that arrives late meets a shooter who has started to decelerate. One that arrives behind her turns her back toward the pass. Either ball might still be completed. This one reaches her while the shot is still part of the run. That is what the timing bought. Two possessions is not a study. These clips are on video because they worked, which is the worst possible way to sample anything. I have not watched enough of Miles' passes to say how often this happens, or what the misses look like. What I have is something to watch for that the record will not hand you. When the ball leaves her hands, look at where it arrives. Then look at the receiver. Can she still do what she was already doing? The larger question needs different work: a few full games coded possession by possession, including the ones the Lynx lost, grading the catch before seeing the outcome. That is the next thing I want to do with this.