My point is who cares about assist totals, if Vasquez makes the team better it does not matter how many assists he gets, if he averages 5 assists and helps the team that's a tremendous help. People are placing to much weight on numbers, Vasquez is a good guy and player who will make the team better. Patterson didn't average many assists and the moment he came into games last season the ball movement was so much better, Vasquez will do the same, people need to realize it's about impact on winning not numbers.....
All true. I think if people weren't doing the homer justification thing this wouldn't even be worthy of any more mention.
Greivez Vasquez very likely had his assist totals artificially raised last year by cheating scorekeepers. Just flat out, the truth. Very likely. Just the way it has long worked down there. Something people should know when trying to assess or use numbers with New Orleans PGs.
However in Vasquez's case last year the inflation does not look to rise to such a level as to essentially overstate the nature of his game, so its not worthy of major talking pointness unless you consider that 9apg mark to be signficiant.
Now, the thing about the "made the right pass/who cares" argument is this: Vasquez's New Orleans' offense was not one of the better ones last year. Nearly identical to ours in percentages, and one of the worst in pts scored (which is likely pace related):
New Orleans FG% .448
Sacramento FG% .447
New Orleans 3pt% .363
Sacramento 3pt% .363
New Orleans Pts/gm 94.1 (25th in NBA)
Sacramento Pts/gm 100.2 (10th in NBA)
So when you say "who cares he made the right pass"...well it comes down to if the numbers aren't legit, and the team numbers weren't sparkling with him at the PG, just how legit is he?? And that's a legit argument. Its not like there is a visible Nash effect. In fact our team last year appeared to get it done just about as well as Vasquez was with his. But of course that's a complex debate with many factors that we could argue about for months -- teammates, offenses, ball dominance and just so on, and before we were doen with the debate the season would be upon us and we would just see.