I’ve received mixed definitions for this term. One of my friends who played throughout high school told me that an assist is not credited if the player who received the ball takes a dribble, then makes the field goal. I was watching an NBA game the other night and someone said that an assist can occur when the receiving player takes a few dribbles. Were they both correct? Does the definition of “assist” change from league to league? If not, who is right?
This sounds like a good definition, found on a wikipedia-type site, not an NBA or NCAA reference.
This tells me dribbling is OK, as long as it is moving toward the shot.
This distinction is frequently left up to the official scorer. I just spoke w the men’s basketball coach here at my school (an NCAA Division III college) and he defined an assist as “a pass and two or less dribbles that leads directly to a made shot.” He then mentioned that there are wide differences in opinions on how to interpret that rule. One school in our conference has the league leader in assists literally every year. We played that school last week - our scorer credited their point guard with four assists, their scorer gave him 11.
When I’ve worked as a scorer, I gave an assist if the pass led directly to the basket being made. Sometimes that would include a 70-foot outlet pass followed by three dribbles and a lay-in - without that bullet pass, there’d be no basket. If a shooter caught the ball at the top of the key and used two dribbles to initiate a drive to the basket, but then stepped back for a three pointer, I wouldn’t give an assist.
This, however, was at the high shool level. My guess is that there are more stringent guidelines for NBA and NCAA Division I scorers (especially the NBA, where player salaries can be impacted by assist numbers, assist-to-turnover ratio, etc).
Actually, the 2005 NCAA Statisticians Manual, Section 30 (PDF) says it better.
Typos in quote are mine, I retyped.