Yes, he shot poorly. Yes, he got beat trying to defend the Nash pick and roll almost as bad as Brooks and Lowry did. But... with Artest trapped in the corner with only seconds left in a tied game, only 1 player on the court had the awareness to call a TO that gave us another chance to win the game. I tend to be on the anti-Battier side of the spectrum despite all the praise he gets for his intangibles but that decision he made in the clutch was huge.
Agreed. It was a great play. I was surprised no one else on the floor called it. Ron definatly should have had the presence of mind to know that he was in a bad situation and needed to call a timeout. Ah wells. Came away with the win
Is there any answer to the high pick and roll with Yao, that is going to be the achilles heal of this team.
Grant Hill ... 25 minutes, 0-3 from the field, 0 points Shane Battier ... 35 minutes, 1-6 from the field, 2 points Evidently, the two Dukies were trying to out-intangible eachother. Our guy won!
No reason not to still use it. It's worthy of more attention. He made a game changing decision that epitomizes Battier's greatest strengths: his game awareness and basketball intelligence. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Battier in a similar way that I wasn't a big fan of Alston but I have learned to appreciate the little things he does more and more. I guess I just underappreciate the little things in favor of more tangibles. I realize there is a lot more to the game of basketball than points, rebounds, assists, etc... but this Rockets team has been hampered for years with two offensive liabilities in the starting lineup. Three, when Hayes was starting a couple of years ago. It would have been one thing if McGrady and Yao were the next coming of Kobe and Shaq but they never were, no matter what the statistics show. This team needs more balance given the shortcomings of our cornerstones. I'm not saying we've achieved that yet, but it looks like Morey is trying to go in that direction.
Things like this does not show up in the box score. Things like that is the reason why he will always be under appreciated by a lot of people on this board.
Hill's just old. It's not his fault he's been reduced to a jump shooter that plays poor D. But Battier on the other hand...it's gotta be the 4th game out of the last 5 that he's had a box score like that. I am the biggest Battier fan ever. I have Battier jerseys from both his Rocket and Duke days. And even I am starting to wonder if his intangibles are starting to be outweighed by the deterioration in both his offensive and defensive games. Let's face it. The athleticism came back for a little bit when he got the tan, but now like the tan he is getting beat routinely on D. We switched him onto Nash at the end of the game, and Nash STILL had his way with Battier, just faking him and driving on him relentlessly. And Nash isn't the fastest person in the NBA by any stretch. Add that to the fact that his shot is just nowhere to be found, and he has no confidence taking it to the hoop, and you have to start wondering. He's having the worst year of his career (in the box score, in the eyeball test, AND the Morey statistics I bet you); I think it's hard to argue against that. Are his injuries still limiting him? Is he just on the downside of his career? Now that we don't have Rafer, he has become the crutch of our offense, the guy that teams rotate off of, the guy who when Bullard shows a replay of the Rockets' offensive set you are asking yourself, "Why can't I see a 5th Rocket? Oh right, Battier is sitting in the corner not being guarded." It pains me to see someone with such a high bball IQ hurting the team, but he needs to improve or something will have to give.
In a playoff series, we could defend it. Utah runs it all the time and IIRC, our defense against Utah was pretty good. If we could score more than 90 points a game we would win the game. I think what we do is have someone rotate to cover Yao's Boozer, and Yao pops out on Williams.
you ate an anti battier person?????????? why???????? any other team team would kill to have him as a player on their team just for the morale alone. im guessing your one of those guys who takes everything for granted, but this is a sport so you have no excuse for being wrongly negative. just go hard with the punches of great players or go home. ps i was reading a lakers forum and they would kill for battier, so what does thast say of rockets fans when a greatwr team want one of our guys who can meld on any team....... YOUR SELFISH AND IGNORANT, EVERYONE WHO HATES BATTIER....
that was a huge play. i can't believe artest didn't know to call the timeout, it was the obvious play. brooks probably should have called timeout when he almost fell out of bounds a few minutes before but his pass made it to yao so it worked out. we need to be aware. and whle he missed all his 3's, battier was fairly "tangible" today. 3 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals, and a block. plus the timeout, plus forcing a TO by richardson when it looked like he had a drive. nash had his way with everyone - brooks, lowry, and battier - not because of those guys but because of yao. shaq setting a pick while yao stands 5 feet from the basket means you either give nash an open 3 or an open 15 footer, not many ways around that. battier was probably the closest to contesting the jumpers but that still won't do much when nash is basically open. phoenix should have run it more earlier in the game. that's really the problem of late. even doing little else, he's fine in our offense if he makes his 3's. right now he can't throw it in the ocean, but his career says he'll hit about 38-39% of them, which is above average and is fine. we just have to hope the law of averages works out. isn't battier not being guarded good? that means we have a good 3 point shooter open. it's one thing when chuck hayes isn't guarded and you know he still probably won't make the shot, but battier, like a lot of role playing 3 point shooters, typically isn't a good guy to leave open. he either spaces the floor or gets us 3's, he's just missing lately.
you're very right. you can't have a team full of battiers (which is mostly what we've had) with tmac and yao in the 4th quarter of playoff games (especially yao) whereas with shaq and kobe you could have all batters because shaq and kobe can get a good shot every single possession so all the battiers have to do is drain open 3's and play good D. but as you said, we need balance. you don't get rid of all the battiers, but you do bring in some brooks's and lowry's and wafer's and tell them to be aggressive. then you've got floor spacers and guys who hit shots and then guys who drive and get to the line and get their own shot and then artest and yao to carry the load for the most part. i would feel better if we could squeeze all of the penetrating and scoring of wafer/lowry/brooks into 2 above average scorers (or one really above average penetrator/scorer) but we have to make due with what we can, especially in a luxury tax world with tmac eating up 23 million.
More like the most bone-headed play of the game. Why Artest insists on trying to do it all himself at the end of close games is beyond me...especially when he gets stuck that badly and forgets/refuses to call timeout.
