a retraction from your prior "no more than a bench player" comment, i see. but are saying nba coaches, even the veterans like adelman, will start guys on just their reputation?
Adelman did start Alston over Brooks before he was traded last season. Sometimes you need a push from Morey.
umm.. yea. ask JVG with his knicks players. ask adelman about chris webber. shane battier has done a lot for this team and he'll get a chance to prove himself whether he's still the same player as in years' past. but you can see adelman starting to decrease his minutes when shane struggles. in the last 5 games, 2 games shane played more than 30 minutes (the games he shot well). the other 3 games (including tonight), he played bad and he played less than 30 minutes. so like i said, if shane starts out "well," he'll get minutes. if not, he won't. that's all i'm saying.
I honestly can't remember the last time Battier got into foul trouble, but because of that, he wasn't even on Kobe for most of the game. And...I don't see why it matters what his +/- is. We won the game and that's all that matters.
it should tell a trend is apparent. chase is slowly getting more minutes, and that is at the expense of shane (this is eerily like brooks slowly gets the minutes from rafer). we never had a backup for shane before this year. now we do. so if he struggles, he's going to sit. i just rewatched a few minutes of the game from broadband. and i can honestly say this is the first game where ariza has impressed me with his individual defense. hopefully he can continue this.
whoa...I came in here hoping to see a massive positive +/- for Shane and whoa....looking at the boxscore all I see is he is the ONLY negative +/- and not only that he had a whopping -15 +/- which is lyk certainly no-stats-no-star shanes losing his game...he doesnt contribute on the offensive end...so if he cant even guard kobe and ron goes off for a season-best night...then what can he do? I don't mean to be a Battier hater but he is turning into complete trash for this team....... Battier for Okafor!!
hmm, yes. i see ab a star in the future. if he doesn't turn into one, then that's becoz he doesn't try hard and i will still be right. i say battier is no more than a bench player. if adelman still starts him, then he does that purely based on reputation and i will be still right. oh the need to be right... and nice logic.
Through 3 quarters, he wasn't helping much at all. The Rockets got down big with him on the court early (not his fault totally), and he only played the opening minutes of the second and third due to foul trouble. I thought the Rockets were served well with Bundinger on the floor this game, and Ariza did a very good job defensively on Bryant. Not surprising that through 3 quarters, Battier's +/- was so poor. He didn't play very well. Though he made some nice hustle plays in the fourth, some deflections, and hit an important 3-pointer. -1 over that last stint, which isn't bad considering the other team will typically make a run on their home floor when down in the 4th.
As stated by others before, +/- for one game (whether this one or the Utah game) doesn't mean much given the small sample size. In fact, one of the worst things coming out of this whole "statistical revolution" in hoops in people misunderstanding and misusing stats like +/-, etc. The bad +/- results from being on the floor for the initial qtr 1 run by the Lakers, and then getting into foul trouble. Didn't do much except for the 4th qtr. Pretty bad game by Battier for sure, but everyone has them. By the way, I'd like to see how teams tend to perform when up/down by, say, 10-13 points with 2 minutes to go. I got a feeling that, as durvasa stated, that the gap tends to close. For example, the Rockets were more interested in burning the clock than scoring points at that time-- AB was dribbling the ball near midcourt until there were 9 seconds on the shock clock every possession. Effective in winning the game, but it won't help the team's offensive efficiency. Couple that with a defense that tends to emphasize not fouling even more than usual (so clock doesn't stop), the likely goal of a team up by 13 with 2 mins to go is simply to win the game by, say, 7 points or more, rather than to keep building the lead as it would be while, say, up by 13 with 10 minutes to go. On the other hand, a great thing for a players +/- is probably being up by 1 to 3 points, with 24 seconds or less on the clock, and the other team has to intentionally foul and take quick shots.
good point, carl. i'll be the first to say that i'm an amateur in this morey-intensive world of stats and sabermetrics. one lousy +/- game doesn't mean battier's through. i was just kind of wondering aloud how/why this happened, since i missed much of the game. secondarily, i was wondering if this is the start of battier's decline into becoming a bench player. this has as much to do with chase buddingstar's ascendant arc as it does with battier's getting older and slower. it's still early, though. let's see how battier looks in jan/feb and we'll have a better idea.
Well, every player declines eventually, and younger guys get their minutes. I wouldn't be suprised if Budinger gets more of Battier's minutes as the season goes on, even if Battier gets out of the current slump. Budinger is surprisingly game ready as a rookie and has done better on the defensive end than I expected.
The entire starting lineup was garbage for the first half of the first quarter, Battier included. This was a lottery type performance reminiscent of the Game 7 debacle last year. It's pretty obvious that the starting lineup needs a few changes. Can't believe people think T-Mac won't be starting once he's ready to help contribute to the team.
http://www.popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20091115&game=HOULAL It should be noted though that Battier was on the court in the final 8 minutes or so of the 4th quarter when the Rockets pulled away. Surprised his +/- didn't really reflect that.
it's the arizona wildcats. they prepare those players to be really good pros (mike bibby, richard jefferson). those guys had pretty good years in their rookie years too.
you have to look at how the team sees it....fans see 1 of 8, but morey may see that he shot like 3 or 4 threes tonight to bail out the team/brooks. Not only are they not high percentage shots, but they arent the shots battier would make. That being said, i wouldnt be surprised if nothing changed and he continue to play his 30 mins a game.
tmac is coming back soon. cbud is freaking consistent as hell for a rookie. battier is the least consistent offensive player we have right now. and he's going to be the player who loses his minutes. i don't wnat to compare shane to rafer, but their situations are similar. rafer always used to play a ton of minutes for us b/c we had no backup for him. and we needed his ballhandling and ability to control the pace. ZERO (luther???). when we drafted AB, rafer's mins slowly declined. eventually we traded him. battier never had a backup before this year, and we needed his defense and spot up shooting. now we have cbud and ariza for the shooting, plus they're not terrible defenders themselves. i thik right now shane will still get minutes b/c he is our captain and he knows our defense the best (and we still struggle there). once everyone is up to speed on what they should do defensively, you'll eventually see the switch. more defensive gems like what ariza put up tonight v. kobe should speed up the process.
