Assist Percentage estimates the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while on the floor. It answers: "Of all the made baskets by teammates while this player was playing, what fraction did they directly create with a pass?"
Normalizes raw assist totals for pace, playing time, and teammates' shooting volume. A player on a team that shoots frequently will naturally accumulate more raw assists; AST% accounts for this. Directly comparable across eras and teams.
Does not capture the quality of passes, only their outcome. A player who delivers the pass that creates the shot (hockey assist or pre-assist) receives no credit. Does not distinguish an open corner 3 assist from a contested midrange assist. Can be inflated by teammates' shooting efficiency rather than playmaking quality.
AST% is scored in APEX's Playmaking pillar at 45% within-pillar weight (19% total pillar weight ≈ 8.6% of composite score). It provides a distinct signal at non-playmaker positions that AST/TOV alone does not capture. A v1.7 audit tested removing AST% and found it produced a net −1 prediction over the 40-season backtest, confirming it provides non-redundant information despite correlation with AST/TOV.