Assists Per 48 minutes

Jamaal Tinsley is number two in the league in assists per 48 minutes at an extremely impressive 15.1 assists per 48 mins. Only Rajon Rhondo is ahead of him --- at 16.9. Paul is number three at 13.9. Mo Williams is down the list at 9.6. And FWIW, maybe nothing, Tinsley is also in four out of our top five player combinations for plus minus:

http://www.nba.com/statistics/plusminus/plusminus_sort.jsp?pcomb=5&season=22012&split=9&team=Jazz

Despite his inability to shoot and defend, I think Tinsley is probably a net positive as a backup because of the exceptionally high assist rate. Regarding shooting, how the heck did he drop off so dramatically? He was never a great shooter, but I expected him to at least be able to shoot pretty close to last year's numbers: 40% from the field and 27% from threes. Heck, he had a couple of years in his career where he shot threes at a 37% clip on 4 attempts per game. I can understand older age knocking down the percentages for shots in traffiic and under pressure, but I don't see why 34 years old would dramatically change a player's ability to hit wide open shots where he has time to count the seams on the ball. JMO.