Where Do the Assists of LeBron James Go? And Who Feeds the King?

About a week ago I was asked to report an intriguing stat for a particular game. The interested party wanted to know who benefited the most from LeBron James’ assists and, conversely, who assisted LeBron’s baskets. And while it was somewhat satisfying to quickly dig up those figures for one game, I was inspired to take a look at this stat over the entire season to date.

So without further ado, here is how LeBron’s 221 assists to date have been distributed (spanning 28 games).

Player, number of assists (% of assists)

There are quite a few conclusions that can be drawn from this simple chart.

First, Anthony Parker is the biggest recipient of LeBron’s assists. He has 45 of LeBron’s 221 total assists, accounting for 20% of his assists. In fact, Parker has made only 74 field goals on the season, meaning that 60.8% of his shots are assisted by LeBron alone! Dependency isn’t a desirable quality in guards (last year Delonte West had only 48% of his field goals assisted by anyone, let alone over 60% from just LeBron), but in this case it’s hard to argue. Everyone knew Parker was brought in to knock down the three ball and play solid defense. Ultimately, no one expects him to create his own shot and it’s actually refreshing to see that LeBron trusts him so much with the corner three ball, deferring to him more often than his other three point targets.

Secondly, it is important to look at the distribution of LeBron’s assists to his big men. Hickson (13%), Ilgauskas (11%), Varejao (11%), and O’Neal (7%) combine for close to half of LeBron’s assists, with Hickson being the favorite target. This is a somewhat recent development, with James moving further away from Shaq. For instance, in the first two games of the season, LeBron assisted Shaquille O’Neal on five separate occasions (2.5 assists to Shaq per game). However, in the 20 games O’Neal has played in since, LeBron has only found him 11 times (0.55 assists per game). On the other hand, LeBron found Hickson zero times in the first six games of the season, but has found him 28 times in the 22 games since (1.27 assists to JJ per game). In the end, while Z and Andy remain favorite targets, it’s obvious that LeBron enjoys having an athletic big to go to that finishes strong at the rim. The movement away from Shaq could be seen as troubling, however, as the two still have yet to develop solid chemistry.

Lastly, from looking at the graphic it’s apparent that LeBron prefers to target his three point shooters. The Cavs top 3 three-point shooters–Anthony Parker, Daniel Gibson, and Mo Williams–account for about 44% of LeBron’s assists, 2% more than the four big men already analyzed. Furthermore, out of these 98 assists, 69 of them were on three pointers (70.4%). When looking at all 221 of LeBron’s assists to date, 77 of them were on three pointers, meaning 34.8% of his assists are to players making a three pointer. I feel this is a true testament to Cleveland’s “spread the floor” mentality, allowing LeBron to either get to the basket or find a three point shooter in the corner or on the wing along the way.

One of the most impressive things to take away from this graphic is the fact that LeBron has already assisted nine different teammates at least 10 times–seven of them over 15 times. When you compare this to other small forwards around the league, you find that players like Kevin Durant (77 asts) don’t even have enough assists to date to find nine teammates the bare minimum 10 times (90 asts). When it comes to assists, LeBron’s passing skills may be second only to his ability to spread the ball around and involve nearly every teammate.

Okay, so what about the teammates that find LeBron?

First, I feel this should come with a disclaimer. LeBron James handles the ball the majority of the time in the Cleveland Cavaliers offense and creates for others. If you’re a fan you probably just gave a blank stare at the screen out of the obviousness of that statement. But you have to keep this in mind when you realize that his teammates are not as likely to assist LeBron James as much as he assists them. This also explains why LeBron has been assisted on only 88 of his 276 field goals (31.9% assisted). Therefore, it is with this understanding that we take a look at who assists LeBron’s baskets.

Player, number of assists (% of assists)

One of the first things to stand out is that Mo Williams has done a very good job of setting up LeBron. He has assisted LeBron James 39 times so far this season, which happens to be the exact same number of times that LeBron has assisted Mo. Seeing as though Mo Williams doesn’t handle the ball the same amount of time as LeBron when they’re both in the game, I think it’s pretty impressive that he has assisted him an equal number of times.

Also, it’s interesting to note that Anthony Parker is second in terms of assisting LeBron James. Granted, Delonte West hasn’t played in every game and is only one assist behind Parker, but it is nice to see some chemistry building between the two new teammates.

Lastly, out of LeBron’s 88 assisted buckets, 75 of them were two-point baskets. Conversely, that means that only 13 of the assisted buckets were three pointers (14.8%). This shouldn’t be too surprising to Cavs fans, as most of LeBron’s three point shots come from his creation, high screens, or fast breaks led by the King himself. Mo Williams found LeBron for the majority of those three pointers, assisting eight of the 13 assisted treys. In the end, it’s definitely refreshing to see Mo Williams can find LeBron for a shot just as quickly as LeBron can for him.

Quick Hitters.

A quick look at LeBron James’ splits in terms of wins or losses doesn’t reveal a whole lot. In 20 wins, James averages 8.2 assists, while he averages 7.3 assists in the team’s 8 losses. Not only is the spread less than one, but this number varies greatly. For example, LeBron had only 4 assists in the team’s huge win in Orlando, but dished out 12 dimes in the Cavaliers loss in Toronto.

However, there is something that can be taken away from what happens when LeBron finds several players for at least two assists. When LeBron assists at least two of his teammates multiple times, the team is 15-4 with an average margin of victory of 6.5 points per game. On the other hand, when LeBron fails to find at least two of his teammates for multiple assists, the team is 5-4 with an average margin of victory of only 2.8 points per game.

My advice? Find a few favorite targets and stick with them. Diversity isn’t always the key in this case. When LeBron found six different teammates for assists against Houston, the team lost by six, with Z being the only target found more than once. Then, in a big win at Orlando, LeBron assisted only two teammates, Anthony Parker and JJ Hickson, but found them each twice. Similarly, in a quality 16 point win over Phoenix, LeBron found three different teammates–Mo, Parker, and Shaq–three different times each.

Lastly, over the last five games LeBron has been trending towards finding Mo Williams. He has found him for 9 of his 34 assists (26.5%) in the last five games, assisting him in every game but last night (4-0 over the last five when assisting Mo Williams). Also, five of the nine assists to Mo Williams have been three-pointers, netting him 23 points off of those nine assists. Looking at the other side of assists, Mo Williams has assisted LeBron 8 times in the last five games and has had at least one assist to LeBron in the past eight games (17 assists to James over those 8 games).

There is a lot of information to grab from these stats. Some of it should be taken with a grain of salt. For instance, just because LeBron doesn’t have multiple assists to several teammates, doesn’t mean he’s not trying. To net an assist, the teammate also needs to hold up his end of the deal. In the end, the stats provide interesting trends and a look at the passing distribution of LeBron James, but understand that they don’t explain everything.

Where Do the Assists of LeBron James Go? And Who Feeds the King?