Statistical Analysis of Kobe, before and after Battier

since JVG has been here, we've done a great job v. the majority of the wing scorers, not just kobe. lebron, melo... have struggled mightily against us.

again, people really ignore our defensive philosophy.

look at the celtics. they allow around 42.5% fg with kg. with kg out recently, it went up only slightly to 44%. the reason they're still top 5 in defense the past 10 games since kg has been out is b/c of the defensive philosophy (thanks to thibideau).

 

I get what you're saying t_mac1 and you are right. Our defense is not good just because of Battier. However to minimize his effect is also incorrect.

Battier cuts him off and forces him into a more difficult shot every single time. He's helped by the team defense when he cuts Kobe off and they position to trap or whatever they're doing, but if Battier was incapable of doing his part, which few are capable of doing, then none of it would matter if you didn't double him every time. He would run right by his defender (like Tmac) and get an easy layup.

 

Dr of Dunk, that's kinda what I think about. Its kinda what happened to kobe in the finals. Kobe had to spend energy on pierce,allen or posey. They tried to hide him rondo, but rondo was too quick. So say kobe is scoring 30 on shane, but shane is scoring 6, but for argument sakes kobe is scoring the same 30, but gay is scoring 17, that's still +9 our way. Kobe has had some big 4th qts against us because he doesn't have to use energy on defense. Just like most good offensive players, the more they spend defending, the less they normally have on offense.

 

No it doesn't work that way. If Kobe is scoring 30 on Gay you can bet he's taking fewer shots to do so. With Battier it has generally taken far more shots for him to get those points.

Plus, if Gay were playing Von Wafer wouldn't, so that's minus 9 right there. You see that's why you can't just swap players nad PPG numbers. There's a lot at work behind those nubmers.

 

If Rudy Gay is scoring 11 more points than Battier, that means he's using up more possessions. That means less shots/scoring for his teammates. To say that's "+9 our way" just isn't correct. You are attaching way too much importance to the box score -- ppg does not translate directly to team +/- like that.

 

Thank you for saying what I said in a much smarter way

 

jerico, I was thinking about what DOD was talking about. No one is shutting kobe down. Like the op has stated, kobe has avg 35 since shane has been here. I just used gay because it was brought up. I also watched the finals and didn't see the big 4th qts because he was playing against tt's d, and he had to guard 2 premier offensive threats like allen and pierce vs resting like he does against shane.

 

You don't have to shut Kobe down. If he's scoring 35 ppg, but he's doing so inefficiently, that means you making a lot of stops against the Lakers as a team. That's what matters, not how many points you give up to a particular player.

 

Right, and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that. But what I am saying is that just swapping Gay's offensive numbers with Battier's and saying that's a +9 for our team is incorrect. Refer to durvasa's and my previous post. If Gay is scoring, then he's taking offensive opportunities away from other teamates.

Also I agree that no one is going to shut Kobe down. But you can make him work for it more. I don't think it's much of a coincidence that his one big game against us this year came when Battier wasn't playing.

 

Durvasa, I agree what you're saying about taking shots away. I'm saying, who was the stopper for boston? We can say posey, but he played a lot on odom. Kobe had to play defense and maintain his offense. When he had shaq, he could lock down guys then bring his offense.In the finals, he couldn't do it.

 

Dont mean to be negative, but whats the meaning of this kind of statistical analysis? Rocket paly against Lakers 4 times a season, that makes Batter have 12 chances in total to defend Kobe after Rocket took him, while Kobe have played more than 240 games for the past three years. Technically, will any conclusion draw from Batter's insufficient count of sample show any 'statistical significance' ?

Besides, there may be 'outliers' in the sample too. Basketball player's efficiency can be affected by loads of factors, like emotion, body status, home/road adjustment. Kobe may put on a huge game when play against Battier if he happened to have tremendous layup with his gorgeous wife the night before. and that will easily make the sample unreliable.

Anyway, bravo for the hard working

 

It is impossible to isolate each fundamental factor that leads to winning. It's the classic adage, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." For basketball, the power of an offense is greater than the sum of its scorers. To use an analogy, we all experience our own consciousness, and our consciousness is certainly real, or else we would not be conscious. However, when a surgeon cuts open our heads, nay, our entire body, there is no "consciousness." No matter how fine you split our neurons, even our atoms, there is nothing where you can point at and say, "That's consciousness." By dissecting the body, you lose the consciousness. When you try to take apart winning basketball to try to find what factors contributed how much, you lose what makes winning basketball. The entire team, and to a lesser extent the entire organization, including the fans, affects winning percentage. If you want to look at shooting percentage to gauge value, then you need to factor in PPG to get a more objective picture, then you need to factor in turnovers for a more objective picture, then you need to factor in home/road, then you need to factor in picks set, then you need to factor in charges taken and entry passes made, then clutch situations, then opponents skin the player has gotten under and caused a technical foul, and so on to infinity until sample sizes become infinitely small and reveals how pointless trying to pinpoint value of individuals within a team is. The factors are incapable of being isolated and analyzed, because their effects only occur within their role of the entire team. Each player's performance affects the statistics of EVERY OTHER PLAYER ON THE FLOOR AT THE TIME. The only thing we can count as fans with rooting interest is Wins and Losses. Just like how Ron Artest says, we win as a team and we lose as a team. So that's what I mean when I say that the record is the most important thing to count, because it is the only statistic that applies to everyone.

There are useful ways to evaluate players, but looking at their personal statistics isn't one of them.

 

If Gay is scoring, who cares if he's taking opportunities away? Would a bucket from Gay count any less than a bucket from anyone else?

It's not about "outscoring" - I agree. But if I score 8 less points in a game, even by missing 4 more shots, but get 4 more assists in the game, then what?

Again, the whole conversation started with Battier's effectiveness on Kobe, and I'm saying you can't look at a boxscore and quantify that Battier alone stopped Kobe without taking into account on what possessions he was guarding Kobe, what defense we were playing, who else was playing, etc. Otherwise, you fall victim to exactly what longliverox says about outlying data in a small sample... although he lost me about tremendously laying up his wife... damn.

Another example of this would be everyone going back and saying how Hakeem played vs. Shaq or Barkley played Malone, Wilt played Russell, Hakeem played Kareem (wait... or did Ralph play Kareem in that game? or did they swap off at times?) by using head-to-head stats. Are you saying these people played each other one-on-one with no defensive help on every play? Another example : was Yao in the game when Battier was playing? I'm guessing Kobe may be a bit more hesitant to drive the paint with a monster in the middle (maybe not...), so Yao helps Battier in that situation. Did someone like Kirk Snyder guard Kobe at any time in those games? Did anyone else guard him? Or are we just going to look at the available stats and say "Battier did a better job" based upon stats before and after he got here? If the latter, then you're content looking at a blackbox view of basketball.

 

Dr, that's why I'm not a stat guy. That's like people always parlay battier into helping tracy. I see it as if the rox had a better offensive player on the wing, tracy would use more energy on defense. We've seen him score and lock his man down. So I don't look at the stats so much as the other factors. I think battier does a good job, but like the last game, kobe scored like every possession in the 4th qt while shane was guarding him.

 

R u trying to get a PhD in "NBA study"?

 

It could also be the other way around. Maybe Shane had to exert all his energy on the defensive end because McGrady totally sucked on that end. If McGrady wasn't so lazy on the defense maybe Battier could've leaked out on a break for a few possession a night increasing his PPG average over double digits.

 

Quick observation:

After reading this board, I get the feeling that people who don't like Shane are mostly McGrady apologists. And surprisingly, these same people also don't think highly of Yao. These must be the people that ESPN markets to when they do there Sportscenter Highlights.

 

You said this in the other thread as well, so once again I have to point out that a system means nothing without someone who constantly keeps it going. Players alone will not keep a system going, eventually they'll get away from it. Usually the coach is who gets them back on it, Boston has Thibodeau to do this and we had JVG, once JVG left, Adelman didn't really keep preaching JVG's defense, it was mainly battier (and deke) who took that initiative (it was reported by the chronicle back then) to keep that system alive.