Playmaking is one of the most valuable abilities a basketball player can have. It can matter even more than a players' scoring ability especially when paired alongside very talented players.
Fans typically think of assists as a measure of playmaking, but this fails to capture a decent amount of playmaking value. Through just assists, players will not get credit for so-called "hockey assists" where multiple passes may be required to convert the advantage into a high-quality shot. Even worse, credit is given to the last player to pass rather than the one who created the advantage in the first place. Take a look at this play below the Warriors ran against the Grizzlies in 2015:
Draymond Green got credit for the assist since he was the one to make the final pass to Bogut, but was he the one who created the initial offensive advantage? No. The screening action at the wing between Curry and Thompson forced a double team. Thompson passed inside to Green, taking the two Grizzlies defenders guarding Thompson out of the play. All Green had to do was find the open man. These short roll actions were the bread-and-butter of the Warriors dynasty, leveraging the perimeter shooting threats of Curry and Thompson to create 4 versus 3 opportunities going to the basket. Draymond Green has racked up thousands of assists on this action alone throughout his career, but he wasn't the primary playmaking threat on any of them: Curry and Thompson were.
Instead of looking at assists, Ben Taylor proposes using box creation, a regression framework using the box score statistics to get a better idea of the amount of pressure a player is applying to defense. Accordingly, that pressure should lead to playmaking opportunities, regardless of the outcome of the final shot. I personally think that while box creation is far better for on-ball playmakers, it can fail to capture some of the off-ball value that certain players have.
Another way to attack this problem is to look at how a player impacts the shooting of his teammates. When a star player is on the court, he commands more attention from the opposing defenses leading to easier looks for his teammates. Teammates getting easier looking means that they should shoot convert those shots at a higher clip. By this method, those that result in the largest improvement of teammates' when the star is on the court versus when they are off the court, are the best playmakers.
I will select the NBA's top ten leaders in offensive load, a measure of how many possessions per 100 a player is "directly involved" in a play. This does a better of a job than Usage Rate of determining the degree to which certain players are the offensive engines for their teams. Below are the leaders:
| Player | Team | Minutes | Offensive Load | Assists per Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luka Doncic | DAL | 1851 | 62.1 | 8.7 |
| Trae Young | ATL | 1849 | 60.1 | 9.6 |
| James Harden | BKN | 1558 | 55.5 | 10.9 |
| Damian Lillard | POR | 1942 | 55.2 | 7.4 |
| LeBron James | LAL | 1388 | 54.3 | 7.4 |
| Nikola Jokic | DEN | 2086 | 53.1 | 8.6 |
| Russell Westbrook | WAS | 1852 | 52.4 | 11.0 |
| Stephen Curry | GSW | 1770 | 52.3 | 5.8 |
| Donovan Mitchell | UTA | 1771 | 52.0 | 5.2 |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | MIL | 1654 | 51.6 | 5.9 |
It's fairly obvious to see a clear top two of Doncic and Young, by far the most involved player in their respective offenses. This tracks with what we expect: the Hawks and Mavericks are loaded with outside shooters and excellent slashers but almost no players who can get their own shot. Most players down the list who we'd consider better than the first two have secondary creators (Harden has KD and Kyrie, Lillard has CJ and Gary Trent/Norman Powell, etc.) allowing them to lessen their load.
For each of these players, I pulled impact data on their teammates from NBA.com. Selecting players with a large enough sample size (200+ FGA, and 50+ FGA when the star is on and off the court), we find about six to nine qualified players for each star above. I decided to compare their True Shooting, a better representation of shot efficiency by adding in the added value of threes and free throws. Below are the results from Luka Doncic's teammates:
Once again, we see Doncic and Young separate themselves into a league of their own. Largely I attribute this to both their on-ball playmaking abilities and a lack of secondary playmakers on the roster when they sit on the bench. LeBron and Jokic are some of the best (if not outright the best) passers we have in the league, so it's no surprise they rank very highly by this metric. Both have respectable shooters on the team and effective slashers they can take leverage, though not on the same level as the Mavericks and Hawks.
Curry is somewhat of a unicorn among this bunch, primarily being an off-ball playmaker (hence his APG numbers being on the lower end among this group). Still, his spacing ability and threat of perimeter shooting is opening up the floor for the otherwise lackluster offensive cast.
Westbrook and Harden have the two highest assist per game numbers in the league, and that's about where the similarities end. Harden is doing an excellent job of supercharging an already all-time efficient Nets offense without him to even higher highs. Westbrook is actually performing a role more similar to Lillard. Both have secondary scoring stars and use their scoring ability, Westbrook at the rim and Lillard behind the arc, to set up their teammates for higher quality looks. The Blazers have better perimeter shooting talent overall, which could explain the difference the data is showing between these players.
Donovan Mitchell and Giannis Antetokounmpo aren't what you would think of as elite playmakers, like the other eight players. Mitchell's "lack" of impact in this metric isn't a result of any deficiencies on his part; the Jazz have a plethora of average to above-average passers on the roster in Conley, Ingles, Clarkson, and Bogdanovic. When Mitchell goes to the bench, the Jazz are still able to tread water and move the ball to find high-quality looks. With Giannis, the Bucks have bolstered their perimeter talent and depth, meaning Middleton Holiday (and Teague) are able to still generate quality looks without Giannis. This season, Giannis is in more of a finishing role rather than being the primary playmaking option with the ball in his hands at the top of the key.
Overall this method of analysis has opened up new insights into how these teams have constructed their rosters and how these star players have impacted the teams they're on. The rest of the star player's teammate breakdowns are below.
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