For reasons noted below, I’m OK with Shaka and staff talking about a goal of 32 deflections per game. I believe what should not be allowed is anyone saying ‘game X was our best deflection game because we had X deflections that game, which is more than any other game’.
While not perfect, something like deflections per possession would be much more useful and easy to calculate / track (as opposed to getting to quality of deflections – which can certainly be analyzed by tape, but not easy to calculate for the average person).
If my opponent has 60 possessions in a game and I have 32 deflections – without additional, very detailed information -- I am more pleased with the number of deflections than if my opponent had 75 possessions and I have 33 deflections.
To keep things simple.. for the public, the media, and certainly the players… talking about a consistent goal of a precise number of deflections in a game is fine. Properly adjusting based on forecasts or actuals would be crazy in a scenario where your bench is holding up a progress report to players on the court throughout the game. Therefore, I will choose to be OK with this talk of 32 per game.
But, please... do not proclaim something like, 'we had X number of deflections tonight! That means it's our best deflections game!'
BTW, looking forward to monitoring our 3FGA/FGA a lot this year.