Modeling the extra pass in basketball – an assessment of one of the most crucial skills for creating great ball movement

NBA teams rely heavily on their star players, though an ever-increasing tendency shows that proper ball movement is key for building a successful offense. According to experts, one of the most crucial individual contributions for this aspect is ‘making the extra pass’ – meaning to pass on a decent shooting opportunity to create an even better one. However, judging this ability is subjective, even a precise definition is missing. In this analysis, we conceptualize the event and design a method to measure this skill on an individual player level. Using this model, we analyze directly assisted shots – whether they could have been turned down to make the extra pass. In-season statistics are used to calculate the scoring efficiency of the player from the particular zone given the distance of the closest defender. Our method helps to automatically find individual situations where the extra pass could have been played to gain a margin in Expected Points and scaled up to a whole season, we are able to identify which areas of the court are the most often overlooked. By detecting these missed opportunities of extra passes, experts can easily point out situations where better teamwork can lead to better scoring opportunities.