Last Updated on June 22, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake
JJ Reddick recently said to Lebron James on the Mind The Game podcast that screen assists, aka the man setting the screen that aids in scoring, should be a box score statistic. Lebron James concurred or at least was willing to be agreeable at the time during the conversation.
I agree that screens are important in basketball and that a good screener is an asset to have. But I wouldn’t have it as a box score statistic. For one, has JJ Reddick ever tried to score at a basketball game? It’s difficult to do as it is. The last thing scorers would want is an additional column on the chart that they have to fill out. But he has a point in that basketball fans don’t appreciate enough the value that comes from setting a good screen. How might else we add recognition to this defensive achievement without it showing in a new column on a box score chart? Perhaps analysts can give more credit to the number of picks a player has set throughout a game.
If picks did show up on the box score, only a couple of players would have a lot of them and many other players would have none because a team always has 1 or 2 guys that they want setting the screens. Moreover, setting screens isn’t difficult. One of the reasons it looks difficult is because the bigger players who often set them don’t spend much time playing basketball. Many of them get into the NBA having not even played basketball growing up and made it due to their size. It’s not hard to set a good pick.
If in theory it wasn’t hard to set a good pick, yet the pick was a considerable factor in the player with the ball scoring, should it show up on the box score? I don’t think so. Nearly all of the credit still belongs to the player with the ball. With assists, it’s often different. An assist can result in simple layups. You generally don’t get simple layups from picks.