Tom Schreiber is the best passer in the world for a few reasons. He zips 80 mile-per-hour lasers that give the goalie almost no time to find the shooter. His ability to alter release angles makes it difficult for defenders to play passing lanes. Schreiber sees two slides sinking in from his peripherals. He led all midfielders in assists in 2019 – and he’s an even better passer than assist totals suggest.

Division of credit between the shooter and the passer has been a topic in NBA analytics since Dean Oliver wrote ‘Basketball On Paper.’ On some goals, the shooter did more work to create the goal, while on other goals, the passer’s job is more difficult. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We need to look at a few different metrics: shot location, situation, and second assists.

Oliver uses location of the shot to approximate credit – the shooter receives more credit for perimeter shots, while the passer receives more credit from alley-oops. Jamming the ball into high percentage areas is a skill. Of Schreiber’s 61 assist opportunities, 28 were for shots between the hash marks (2nd most in PLL). Only Connor Fields had more feeds to the middle – and nobody had more skips through to the weakside.

Those skip passes turn the decades-long debate over division of credit into an easy discussion. Give a lot of credit to the passer. Not many other players are threading a 30-yard skip like this.