This game is why I reserve editorial discretion when it comes to showing assists or not. Malik Beasley had 5 of them, which is a lot, right? Normally, I would show that many for a player like him. But these, my friends, were the worst assists EVER. Not in the sense that they were bad basketball plays, but in the sense that most of them were stretching the definition of “assist” to its maximum.
One of them was a swing for a three. That was the best one. The rest were to bigman postups, or worse, swings to a big man who then dribbled a few times to score from the perimeter. I’ve ragged on the Nuggets stat-keepers for doling out spurious assists like candy before. Like it or not, their liberal hand in awarding them makes all of Nikola Jokic’s assist records look worse. How many assists would he be getting in Europe? A bunch, but not nearly as many as here in Denver.
So if you wanted to see “Malik Beasley 21 Points/5 Assists Full Highlights (1/1/2019)”, I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t do it. Those crappy “assists” just diluted his impressive scoring too much. Did you know he’s basically averaging 20 per game in the last few games? Why would I want to lessen the impact of that scoring by showing some cruddy passes?