Battier's value

Uh he wasn't selected because he withdrew his name due to his off season surgery. I'm pretty sure he'd have made the squad for his defensive specialties.

 

The man has great value, on and off the court, greater than any of the stats he does or does not put up.

Trading SB is only an option that brings great return.

Trading Head, on the other hand, is due to almost 2mm of limited consequence and thus a tough 'sell'. Letting him spot up with Yao on the court makes him credible, at least, so that either gets recognized by a team needing that asset or happens in February. So very different than Battier's position.

 

Shane's a great one on one perimeter defender. He's good at containing 2's and 3's. But "every sense of the word" is a little general and overstating it. He's not a great shot blocker. He's not in the top 60 in steals. He plays within himself.

And as far as "extremely efficient offensively", I'm not so sure. He's a good, not great 3 point shooter. His FG % is only about 42, which is nothing to write home about. 8 players in the Rockets rotation shot a higher percentage than shane did last year. On top of all of this, it's not like he's being asked to take difficult shots. His looks come as a result of other players drawing the defense and leaving him open.

And his FT% is simply average. With the veteran reputation he has and his work ethic, I would expect him to be shooting 85% or higher. He should be a lock at the line, not average.

I know most of his contributions are of the intangible sort, and I like him as a player. He's among the league's best defenders, but not a game changer. Offensively, he's limited at best.

 

I think you're right about his ability to lower his opponent's FG% and that it's more crucial than steals. Shane's D on Kobe during the streak game was a thing of beauty. He started a hole trend of literally putting a hand in a shooter's face, that really picked up as the playoffs went on.

I don't want us to ship him out just to take a flyer on a young player. But if he can bring back a legit 3rd scorer, like Redd or Artest, that would be tough for me to turn down. IMO, this team needs shooters much more than defense right now.

 

A fair and accurate evaluation. I would have never made the trade of Swift and Gay for Battier regardless of the "draft night" circumstances.

 

battier is a great reg. season player (terrific).

but he has never shut down anybody v. utah in the 2 years he's been with us. he has a pretty good post game but neither JVG nor adelman utilize it so his offense is limited to shooting 3s, which doesn't take any pressure off of tmac/yao in terms of playmaking.

but he's after all a ROLE PLAYER. role players are never untouchable. superstars are untouchable. role players can be developed. james posey wasn't a wanted role player until he played for pat riley in miami. bowen was never a wanted player until he played for pop. and i can name many more.

at the end of the day, we have enough hustle players. what we need is more skilled and talented players. if battier can net us an offensive talent, we need to let him go. but i don't think his value is that high.

 

Who is battier going to shut down against Utah? I don't remember Ronnie Brewer or Kirilenko killing us on the offensive end. One of the reasons we don't match up well with Utah is that our best defender goes against their scrubs while they have their best defenders (Kirilenko, Harpring, and Brewer) guarding our best player. Once we get Yao back, we are really going to need his outside shooting to space the court and his perimeter defense to keep the other team out of the lane and Yao out of foul trouble. If we had Maggete out on the wing, Yao would get in foul trouble much more often. Battier's value is higher than a lot of you realize.

 

harpring gets the ball a lot when he goes in to score, esp. in the post and battier doesn't come close to stopping him. tmac was switched onto him many times. ak47 also burned him quite often.

outside shooting is easy to get b/c yao/tmac draw so many double teams. like said, if we can trade him to get a mike miller type of player, do it.

 

Harpring and AK both shot worse and scored less against the rockets in the playoffs than they did in the regular season. Harpring scored 33 points in the entire series while averaging close to 20 mins/game. Kirilenko had a good shooting night in game 1 but scored 7 pts/game the rest of the way.

Battier still played great defense, but it just doesn't matter as much when the other team's 2/3s aren't offensive threats. It's like getting an A in a 2 credit hour class vs the Jazz while getting an A in a 6 credit hour class against teams like the Lakers with a dominant scoring sg. Great defensive players that can do something else are at a premium in the nba. Bowen and Posey wouldn't see the floor if they couldn't hit 3s too. You don't see Ryan Bowen racking up the pt. Battier is both a stellar defender and a very solid 3 pt shooter.

What we need is a much better back-up 2/3 to let Tmac rest and not see the offense sputter because Battier can't create. We need another offensive threat but not at the expense of Battier.

 

then how do you supposed we get a "much better" backup 2/3 if we're not gonna give up something.

 

IF Shane Battier is an ex-Rock you had better hope the trade brings back an even better player/players.

 

You're making the classic mistake of not counting that 3 pointers count more. His TS% is .561 which is pretty decent. Also, last year was somewhat of a down year for him in that department, he usually shoots around .570-.580 ish.

 

I think he's a good player, but overblown on this board. He's a really good team defender for the rox. The amnesia people have is since jvg was coach, the rox have been a top 5 defense. Even when wesley was guarding wing guys. Even when francis and mo taylor were defending their spot. Even when Howard was the pf. He didn't shot kobe down. The lakers didn't have a inside presence and the defense tilted towards kobe, forced him to take jumpshots and to his credit, battier contested the shots. That's cool until u play a team like Utah and he can't use that energy on offense. So he's like a soldier without a war. Teams run him off the 3pt line and his inabilty to contribute on offense. After the 22 pt game 1, he avg 7 ppg against a team that is avg defensively. I mean he was traded for a lotto and he was poy and the 6th player taken, yet his game has remained stagnant. So what people value in shane is a little overblown.

 

Honestly I believe Shane is the second best defender in the league, with Tayshaun Prince being first (you can't teach height and length).

 

I'm a very big stats guy and one of the stats I love to see to measure a player's value is Win Shares and Win Shares Above Average. Win Shares is an estimate of how many games a player's responsible for. (Out of 3 times the team's wins, eg. a team with 60 wins have 180 wins to share). Win Share Above Average is exactly what it sounds like, Win Shares above the average player in that particular season. Battier tied for the most Win Shares on the team with 24 with Yao, and led the team in Win Shares Above Average with 10 (Yao's was 9.5).

If you want to learn more about Win Shares here's the link:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

 

I think his value is relative to his circumstance. He's the perfect player for a team that expects to compete for a title in the near future but doesn't bring a lot to the "also rans". He's a great defender but his offensive game and rebounding is limited unless he is playing off another star or two(something many "also rans" don't have enough of).

The problem is, the teams expecting to compete for a title who would want him won't trade talent. Instead they will offer up youth that will take years to develop, expiring contract trash players, or low draft picks. None of those are of any value to the Rockets now so although he is a valuable asset to a contending team, he won't get your team any better talent necessarily which makes him of less value to your team trying to get better.

Does that make sense? In short, he is valuable on a contending team but is of little trade value because his game really only fits in with teams who are more complete and those teams wouldn't be willing to trade the talent we would expect in return.

 

I think we're all on the same page here.....