I don't think you read the stats correctly. It's the percentage when you have a chance to rebound, i.e. the ball is within the reach. It doesn't matter if you play at the wing at on the block. Even if you assume Eastern Conference players are in general worse rebounders, that doesn't explain the difference. To get a perspective, JHo, who most here thinks is a poor rebounder is at 15%. Tmac, who plays on wings, is also at 15.5%. Both are significantly higher than Battier. Swift as a Rocket is at 14%. Maybe Shane did get difficult matchups. However, his matchups won't get any easier, only more difficult in terms of rebounding if he starts at PF. But I applaud your effort of long reply. PS. Sam, this should address your question as well.
here's the problem... James Posey was Memphis's primary perimeter defender(one who guards the toughest matchup) his 3 years in Memphis..... NOT Battier. Eddie Jones was their primary perimeter defender last season.... NOT Battier. I would like to see the "proof" that he can defend guards. Laterally he's slower than Tracy...lateral quickness is the reason why Tracy isn't a SG anymore. The position you play is more about you can defend. Truthfully, Tracy has always been better defending slower, more stationary players ...small fowards. Guards...he lacks foot speed to keep those guys in front of him so he uses his length to bother shots and reach in for steals. Yea, he can guard a guy like Lebron but would look foolish defending Wade...to damn quick for him The Battier trade actually created more holes than it filled. He doesn't have position on this team. In an ideal world with a talented roster he would be Tracy's backup.
Shane's defense is misunderstood. He's no lockdown man on man defender, however he's one of the most impactful team defenders in the NBA. He can effect a team's defensive presence by a great margin. He's got good statistical defense in terms of getting you a block and a steal game. He's very smart at cutting off in rotations and getting in good position to swim over when a guard posts him up. He's got a good physical build , not athletically gifted by any means, to provide a taller, longer, stronger impact on the perimeter. However, he can't guard Kobe, he can't guard Dirk, he can't guard Iverson, he can probably take a stab at guarding players like Pierce, Artest the more physical players. Something T-Mac can do as well, however Shane's defensive impact is the main incentive we brought him here, not to overlook his very encouraging attitude and charisma.
To pre-empt the argument that " maybe Battier boxes out better so his teammates can get more rebounds", I suggest to check out Battier's "team def reb %" as well, then compare it to JHO's Tmac's etc.
indeed, as he is the only true PF of that group. Duncan and Amare are most likely going to be playing center for their team and guarded by Yao. KG and Dirk aren't very physical power forwards and aren't likely to either overpower or outrun Battier. they're both a few inches taller and still very hard to contain. Odom and Marion are even smaller and weaker, but a little quicker. SAR and KMart are a shell of their former selves. Nene is strong, but hardly a threat offensively and David West should be no problem for Battier. so the only PF from a western playoff team that Battier will likely be a poor matchup against is Brand. from the East, all i see is Jermaine O'neal, if he plays PF and the Pacers make the finals. Rasheed is getting older and overrated in general, Walker/Haslem should be no problem for Battier, as well as Gooden and whatever PF the Nets or Bulls use. Jamison might be tough, but seems physically similar to Battier. so there you have it. Battier is more than suitable to be the Rocket's starting PF. backup C is their biggest need right now.
According to 82games.com, BOTH Posey and Battier spent a lot of time at the SG position for the Grizzlies. And both of them had good counterpart SG production. It's not about who was better, they BOTH were good. That's because in 2005-2006, Battier played SF/PF, not SG/SF like in previous seasons. I don't have hard "proof" beyond the counterpart stats at 82games.com, which say that opposing SGs did poorly while Battier played that position. True there might have been some cross matching, I'll admit that I don't know. Anyway, defense is more than just quickness. Good positioning, effort, etc. all play a part. And like I brought up, a lot of supposed SFs are really no different than SGs. Wade is a matchup problem for just about ANYONE. Unlike other star shooting guards, he's more of a PG/SG hybrid than a player who can swing between SG and SF. Most teams don't have a star backcourt player who's also small, so I don't think one guy should be used as a reason against using a certain regular lineup. I disagree. Before the acquisition of Battier, the team's starting wing players were T-Mac and an old, undersized, and washed up Wesley. There might be a few small problems, but I'll easily take Battier over what the team had before.
If Lil' Chuckie comes up with 20 mpg at PF and Hayes plays 12 mpg at PF, then that leaves ~16 mpg to be covered by others. I'd say let's give Novak some spot minutes there, maybe 5-8 per game, and then if we had Mihm/Cook, we could give them the rest very easily and never, never, never, ever, ever, ever miss Juwan, except when we are actually leading the game after the first quarter and aren't down by 10 going into the 2nd and we decide to reminisce on all those good times in 2005-06 when we opened the game and were down after 12 minutes because Juwan was so TERRIBLE playing with Yao that we couldn't stop anybody from running it up on us.
Can you please explain these stats then? 2005-2006 eFG% allowed (SF): 0.446 PER allowed (SF): 13.9 Defensive on/off court: -7 points allowed per 100 possessions 2004-2005 eFG% allowed (SG): 0.462 eFG% allowed (SF): 0.469 PER allowed (SG): 14.1 PER allowed (SF): 13.1 Defensive on/off court: -6.1 points allowed per 100 possessions 2003-2004 eFG% allowed (SG): 0.367 eFG% allowed (SF): 0.511 PER allowed (SG): 12.2 PER allowed (SF): 14.9 Defensive on/off court: -1.4 points allowed per 100 possessions eFG% is FG% with consideration for 3pt shots. League average eFG% is a few hundredths under 0.49). PER is an overall performance rating (think of NBA.com's EFF with consideration for minutes played and team pace), with the average player having a rating of 15 PER. Defensive on/off court is the difference in team defense (in terms of points allowed per 100 possessions by the opposing team) when the player is on the court. I only brought up stats for positions in which Shane spent a significant number of time, to remove ridiculous results from small sample sizes. A few things are consistent. Shane makes his counterpart shoot horrible percentages, resulting in low overall performance. His presence on the court also makes opposing teams score less (this would be the "team defense" and "little things"). In the last two season, his court presence has been huge. Granted, there are some problems with these stats. For example counterpart stats don't consider the effect of help from your teammates (and PER includes some stats about how well your opponent is defending). On/off court stats can be affected by the teammate who substitutes for you. However, these stats do support the claim that Shane is a good defender. Kevin Pelton of 82games.com recently picked Battier as his first choice for the All-Defensive team at SF: You can question the reliability of all the stats I brought up, but to say that Battier is only elite in drawing fouls is wrong.
I'm not sure on why T-Mac cannot guard SGs anymore, and why it hurts his back to guard SGs. Anyone enlighten me on that?
These statistics are becoming dizzying. I just watch the games and listen closely to those know more than I do. The moneyball stuff is pretty new to me and I can't quite make sense of the warranting factors behind many of the analyses. So, if that is the criteria for determining a given player's talented, I am done here.
Well, putting stats analysis aside, just because someone playing closer to the basket doesn't mean he'd grab more rebounds. Size, athleticism and strength all comes into play. Shane Battier doesn't seem to stand out in any of it at pf.
In theory your statement may have some merit. But if you go back and look at Battier's game by game stats he had 7 games where he had 10 or more rebounds and in all but 1 of those he had the majority of his minutes at the PF spot. In fact he had back to back 10 rebound games on Feb. 7 & 8 when he played almost all of his minutes at the PF spot. Now this is not a scientific study but I think it's safe to say Battier's rebound numbers will go up if he plays the majority of his minutes at PF.
It's not really that he can't do it, but you would rather him not do it. TMac is a very good defender but, the more he has to exert that type of energy and focus on that end of the court, makes him that less effective on offense. TMac is most effective as the scorer/playmaker of the team and it would be the best for everyone if that was his main focus. They got Rafer to have someone to take over the ball-handling duties so that TMac could play off the ball more. Now, they get Battier to be the guy who handles the defensive pressure of guarding the other team's best wing scorer. So, instead of having to rely on one player doing everything good, now you have a few players playing their respective roles good to very good, and another player playing his role at an elite status.
stress from running around too much? maybe hitting a pick? what i want to know is if TMac can't guard these SGs, who on the Rockets can as TMac is clearly faster (laterally, footspeed, or what not) than any other non-guard on the team.
Good point. I agree with your input that it's not about T-Mac's ability to defend the two but the optimization of his performance. The situation is not that clear cut though. On offense T-Mac doesn't drive as much as before due to his back, which negates the advantage of putting him on slower sfs. At sg T-Mac can use his length better and shoot over opponents. With the disadvantage of exerting more energy on defense he gets some easier time to get his shots off. To complicate the matter there's whether Battier is more suited at sf or pf debate. Frankly I'm not sure of anything on the lineup right now, hopefully JVG will straighten it out in the preseason with various lineup experiments.
I know I am responding to my own post but I went back and looked at some more games and found 3 more games were he had 9 rebounds and in all of those games he played the majority of minutes at PF. So when Battier had 10 games where he had 9 or more rebounds and 9 out of 10 of those he played the majority of minutes at PF. I could not find anymore game where he played the majority of minutes at PF although I did not look at all games. Also Only 1 game did he appear to have all of his minutes at the PF spot and in that he had 10 rebounds but he only played 26 minutes. So in summation he averaged 10 plus rebounds for all those games he played mostly PF and that's considering he still played significant minutes at the SF spot. Imagine what his rebounds would be if he played all of his minutes at the PF spot. You can decipher this anyway you want but it seems clear to me, more PF minutes equal more rebounds for Battier and while I was thinking he would be a 7 plus rebounder per game at PF I am now thinking at least 8 and maybe even 9 per game. Not too shabby for a NBA PF who can knock down the 3 as well.
