There is one major stat that fans and analysts never bring up in conversations when comparing players and their efficiency: Percentage of Field Goals Assisted via www.basketball-reference.com. Almost every player in the league needs a good portion of his field goals to be assisted especially big men. Guards usually have a lower percentage of field goals assisted because they have the ball more and shoot jumpers off the dribble which most big men don't do. Having a high percentage of field goals assisted means the player is getting a lot of easy looks from teammates and getting these easy looks boosts efficiency. What people don't understand about Jahlil Okafor when comparing him to other young bigs such as Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis is that unlike those guys, Okafor is playing for an astronomically bad team that consists of players that cannot get Okafor easy looks, provide little and inconsistent spacing, and rely on Okafor to shoot in much more volume of self-created looks that Towns and Porzingis are not required to give a team right now. Taking as much self-created looks as Okafor does would decrease any player's efficiency let alone a big man's efficiency.

According to basketball-reference.com, Towns gets assisted on 70.4% of his 2-pt Field Goals and 100% of his 3-pt Field Goals. Porzingis gets assisted on 60% of his 2-pt Field Goals and 100% of his 3-pt Field Goals. Okafor gets assisted on only 39.8% of his 2-pt Field Goals and 0% of 3-pt Field Goals. In other words Towns only has to work to create 3 out of every 10 field goals he makes, Porzingis only has to work to create 4 out of every 10 field goals he makes, while Okafor has to work to create 6 out of every 10 field goals he makes. This stat just goes to show that at this point in their careers Okafor is much more equipped to carry an offense than Porzingis and Towns and if Towns and Porzingis had to play for the 76ers and were asked to carry an offense and/or had to create 60% of their looks, they'd probably look like offensive busts while if Okafor played on teams with perimeter guys like Ricky Rubio, Andrew Wiggins, Arron Afflalo, and Carmelo Anthony like Porzingis and Towns do instead of having Isaiah Canaan and Hollis Thompson as guards, he'd probably already have superstar efficiency because you can count on only one hand the guys in league history who had the post moves Okafor does when they were only 19 years of age like Okafor is right now.

Just look at probably the best PF and Center in today's game in Anthony Davis and Demarcus Cousins for example. Anthony Davis has never had a year where he was assisted on less than 66.7% of his 2-pt field goals and was assisted on 76.5% of his 2-pt Field Goals in his rookie year. Even this season where he is officially crowned as a superstar, Davis is assisted on 72.8% of his 2-pt field goals for this 15-16 season so far which is even a higher percentage than last season for him. Cousins who is considered the best Center in the game had a similar start to Okafor. In Cousins' rookie season he posted a 14.8 Player Efficiency Rating just like Okafor has now, a 48.4% True Shooting Percentage which is actually worse than Okafor's current 49.3% True Shooting Percentage, and Cousins was only assisted on 37.5% of his 2-pt Field Goals which is very similar to Okafor's 39.8 and they were both 19/20 years of age. This season in 2015-16, Cousins is now considered an NBA Superstar and top 2 Center in the league and guess what the difference has been? He is getting assisted on a career high 55.4% of his 2-pt Field Goals, which in turn leads to him now also having a career high True Shooting Percentage at 56.4%, a career high Player Efficiency Rating at 27.1, career high Win Shares Per 48 at .183, career high offensive rating at 109, and a career high Offensive Box Plus-Minus at 2.9 so far this season. Getting assisted on more of his baskets has elevated him from a "inefficient chucker" label, to "bonafide superstar" just like that. There is a clear and heavy correlation between Field Goals assisted and overall efficiency. Jahlil Okafor has a better offensive game as a rookie than Cousins and Davis did as rookies so if he gets the players around him to assist him as much as Cousins gets assisted now let alone the 76.5% of assisted field goals Anthony Davis was assisted on his rookie year, Okafor could end up being one of the greats and Hall of Fame bound just like those two.

As a little side note, Okafor has also put in the work on defense. Opponents shoot 11.9% less when shooting against Okafor inside of 6 ft while trying 6.5 times a game. Opponents shoot 11.1% less inside of 6 ft when shooting against Towns while trying 6.3 times a game. Opponents shoot 9.7% less inside of 6 ft when shooting against Porzingis while trying 6.1 times a game. In other words, opponents shoot the most against Okafor inside of 6 ft between Okafor, Towns, and Porzingis, yet Okafor still makes opponents shoot worse inside of 6 ft than Towns and Porzingis do to their opponents. Just food for thought for the people that think Okafor is such a bad defender.

*Stats are from basketball-reference.com and NBA.com

Wrote it on My Blog too: http://thesixerelixir.sportsblog.com/posts/8157260/okafor-vs-towns---porzingis--the-stat-people-aren-t-paying-attention-to.html



