Tracy Mcgrady seemed lazy on D when he was in Orlando too. That’s why we have Van Gundy. I trust Van Gundy’s ability to make an offensive minded player (Lewis) better on D a hell of a lot more than I trust his ability to make a defensive minded player (Battier) better on offense.
I'd love to get Lewis, but wouldn't trade Battier, T-Mac or Yao for him. Statically, Battier & Lewis are simular & I trust JVG to make Lewis better defensively.
How is averaging twice as many points similar? Statistically, Lewis is more similar to Mcgrady and Yao than he is Battier. He’s an all-star caliber player and Battier is a role player. There’s a reason why the Suns were considering a Marion for Lewis swap.
Dude, learn to read. He didn't say they were statistically similar. He said statically similar. It has nothing to do with how many points they score. Apparently they have a similar number of free electrons.
That does explain it. For 2 days I had been fruitlessly trying to figure out how 20pts & 5 rebounds were similar to 10pts & 5 rebounds, thanks.
Ive been saying this for a long time -- Points per game is not the only stat in the game of basketball. Battier is just as good and better in other areas. There is a reason that Battier's fair salary is higher than Rashards. Quite frankly...the only time you might see Rashard in a Rockts uni is when he is over the hill.
Of course PPG isn't the "only" stat. But when you score 20 and the other guy scores 10, and everything else for the most part is close or evens out (consider points per shot, FG%, FT%, AFG%, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, Per48), their statistics are not comparable. As for "fair salary", Battier's is also higher than Josh Howard's, Joe Johnson's, Kirk Hinrich's, Ben Gordon's, Mike Bibby's, Jermaine Oneal's and one Tracy McGrady. I am not saying it isn't a valuable statistic showing some different dimensions than usually captured in other statistics, but one would be way out of context to thus say Battier is equal or better (statistically or otherwise) than these players simple because of this one statistic. Battier's value on this statistic does not make his trade value near the ballpark of these guys, nor one Rashard Lewis. You need a much bigger sampling of statistics, and there are some evaluations such as this all statistics have limited use (judging whether players will further develop, would they be more/less effective in another setting, etc).
