The ability to make the extra pass is one of the most crucial skills a player can bring to create better ball movement. However, judging this skill is left to the subjectivity of the coaching team. In the paper by PhD student Bence Supola, Dr. Thomas Hoch and Prof. Arnold Baca, the authors conceptualize this event and design a method to measure this ability on an individual player level. Using this model, more than 10.000 directly assisted shots were assessed, whether they could have been turned down to create a better shooting opportunity for a teammate – by making the extra pass. The overall evaluation also provides insights on how the NBA is performing in this aspect according to our model.

The paper has been published in the International Journal of Computer Science in Sport and is available on the following link: https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ijcss-2023-0002