Everyone Could Use Some Help With Assists

Behold the assist.

It is a pass, from one basketball player to another, leading to a field goal by the receiving party.

It can be plain as a biscuit, fancy as a French pastry.

It can be as elaborate as a yo-yo trick, simple as passing the potatoes.

It is an act of kindness, generosity, selflessness and charity.

“It’s like assisting an old lady across the street,” says former assist artist Wilt Chamberlain, “ ‘Here, ma’m, here’s my arm.’ ”

The assist is an art, an act of creating, the genesis of a deuce, a skill as highly prized and praised as the scoring itself.

In the latest National Basketball Assn. statistics, John Stockton of the Utah Jazz leads with 13.4 assists a game. Magic Johnson is second with 13.3. Three assists separate those players.

Stockton was the league leader last season. Magic was the league leader in 4 of the 5 previous seasons.

The problem with assists is that they are like base hits in baseball--some are obvious, others are a matter of opinion, ruled upon by a supposedly impartial judge and subject to a wide range of interpretation.

If I pass you the ball and you wheel and score the hoop, I get an assist. If I pass you the ball and you fake left, dribble right, weave through three defenders, pump fake the other two foes into the air and hit a fall-away jumper, do I get an assist?

No, although it’s always a question of judgment. Did the assist assist?

To be an assist, there should be some continuity and connection between pass and shot, a flow. The whole sequence should be a pas de deux.

“You can’t just give him the ball,” says Chamberlain, the only center in history to lead the league in assists--1967-68. “That’s a give . You have to help him score.”

A fine point, but important if you’re Magic Johnson or John Stockton, with contract clauses, pride, status, reputation wrapped up in that assist title. It is a prestige statistic, second only to scoring average.

It is also the only statistic where you can get, uh, help, from a friendly scorekeeper, such as the one in your home arena. Other stats are more obvious. Nobody can pad Michael Jordan’s scoring totals.

Chamberlain says that he routinely got shorted on the road, assists and rebounds. Wilt has a quick, orderly mind, and he would keep his own totals in his head as he played--points, rebounds, assists. He would also keep his rival’s stats. At any point in the game, Wilt knew how many rebounds he had, how many Bill Russell had.

“If a stat guy likes you, you were in good shape,” Wilt says. “We’d go to Detroit, the guy there would always tell me, ‘I took care of you, Wilt.’ But I knew when I went into Boston, or Madison Square Garden (New York), I’d be cheated on rebounds and assists. I felt they were doing a little number on me. In fact, I know they were. In San Francisco, I could never out-rebound Nate Thurmond.”

That disparity would have balanced out at home, except that Wilt played 7 seasons in Philadelphia, where the head stat man was, and is, the remarkable Harvey Pollack, statistician extraordinaire, who wouldn’t give his grandmother a free rebound.

“I’d go to Harvey,” Wilt says. “I’d say, ‘Come on, Harvey, I get . . . in Boston and Syracuse and New York, I come home and you play it straight.”

Harvey says Wilt frequently complained of getting shorted on rebounds at home. Unbeknown to Pollack, Philadelphia Warriors team owner Eddie Gottlieb had a close friend of Wilt’s sit in the stands 1 game and keep Wilt’s rebounds.

End of game, Wilt’s buddy had the Big Dipper for 20 rebounds. Pollack had Wilt for 25.

“That was the last time Wilt ever complained,” Pollack says.

Harvey is still playing it straight. He did extensive research on assists last season. At most NBA arenas, the home team gets more assists than the visitors. In Utah’s Salt Palace, for instance, 70% of the Jazz field goals are assisted, whereas only 60.9% of visiting field goals are assisted. At the Forum, the numbers are 70% for the Lakers, 63% for visitors.

At Harvey Pollack’s Spectrum, the visiting team actually has an edge, 64% to 63%.

Do stat men fudge for their own guys? Harvey stops short of making that charge, saying simply: “If it’s 3 or 4 (percentage) points difference, you might attribute it to the home team playing better.”

Magic is one of the few top NBA assisters who collect more assists on the road, partly because he plays fewer minutes at home, where the Lakers blow out many opponents.

“I’d love to give Magic more assists, but I can’t,” says Barry Liker, in his 16th season as the assist counter at Laker home games. “(James) Worthy, for instance, makes a lot of pump fakes after he gets the ball, so you can’t give an assist. Byron (Scott) and (Michael) Cooper usually get the ball and pop it right away. Assist. Kareem does a lot of stuff on his own, fakes and things, and you can’t give an assist on that.”

The NBA player today is more likely to get an honest count. Pollack has been keeping stats in Philadelphia since the first year of the NBA, 1946. He agrees that Wilt, for one, got cheated on the road.

“Oh, sure,” Pollack says. “I went with our team to Boston one time and sat in the balcony and kept rebounds, without telling anyone. I even wrote down the time of each rebound. In the final stats, Wilt was given 10 less rebounds than I had him for. I told our writers, and Sports Illustrated wound up writing a big story.”

Do players still get shorted?

“We played at New Jersey this year,” Pollack says. “Maurice Cheeks had 1 assist. I saw the box score the next day. I thought, ‘He brings the ball up court on every play, he sets up every play. By accident he has to have more than 1 assist.’ I took the game film home and scored it. Cheeks had 9 clear-cut assists and 2 or 3 others that were judgment calls.

Harvey says the NBA has never had a clinic for score keepers, to discuss and define and standardize assists and rebounds and other fine points of stat-keeping. If you tip a ball, do you get a rebound? Yes, if it’s a controlled tip. What constitutes control?

“About 30 years ago they had a meeting of the stat guys in each division,” Pollack says. “About 3 times in the last 10 years, someone from the league came around and gave a written test on the rules--one to statisticians, one to timers, one to 24-second-clock operators. I have no idea what the test results were. They never told us. It’s like (the qualification to be an NBA statistician is), ‘Here’s a manual, go read it and do the game.’ ”

This is too bad, because Magic and Stockton probably will battle to the wire, the winner’s name chiseled in stone, heralded and honored and rewarded, all on the basis of a scorekeeper’s whim.

Simple solution: If the stat race is close the last month of the season, enlist Harvey Pollack to tally up Magic’s and Stockton’s assists, via videotapes of the Utah and L.A. games. He could do it over breakfast.