[BP] Battier and the Boxscore

problem #1, he doesn't understand a lot of bball (no biggie);

#2, he thinks he does (big problem).

 

You just described the majority of the owners (in all pro sports).

 

It looks like the NBA may have caught on, or at least ESPN. I noticed on their box scores that they added the +/- column (not sure when this happened). Interesting enough, Rudy Gay was -3 in tonight's game, but then again Battier was -5 five for Tuesday's game Obviously you have to evaluate these numbers for a numerous games, even seasons, to get a better take on a player's value. Not to mention minutes played or possessions were not factored in.

There are also biases inherent in this stat, some that I can think of would be who you are playing with. If you are on a bad team, your numbers would naturally be worse because overall your team is scoring less than the opponent. Also, timing of when you play and who you play with in your "rotation" is not only dependent on your teammate's abilities, but is influenced by who you are playing against. I would suspect a defensive center who was put into the game to cover Hakeem would have a very negative value!

Though not perfect, I like the addition of the stat. For example, looking at the Rocket's game against the Blazers, the Blazer's bench scored 22 points, while the Rocket's bench scored 19 points. However, looking at the +/- numbers, the Blazer's bench was a dismal - 54, while the Rocket's bench was a solid +30! A completely different perspective when looking at +/-.

On a side note, the Rockets traded a lottery pick in a very weak draft for Battier. The players picked in the first 13 were Bargnani, Aldridge, Morrison, T. Thomas, S. Williams, Brandon Roy, Randy Foye, RUDY GAY, Patrick O'Bryant, S. Sene, JJ Redick, Hilton Armstrong, and Thabo Sefolosha. Many of these players have hardly made an impact on their teams. Rudy Gay was also a gamble, as there were questions surrounding his work ethic and character. Im sure the Rockets knew he had potential, but the team was not in a rebuilding like mode. The Rockets were coveting Roy, who would have easily been available in most drafts. Had they got him, I would suspect they wouldn't have made the trade.

 

I think his willingness to trade for Battier suggests otherwise on #2.

 

willingness? reluctance is the word i've heard. unless you're close to him and prove me wrong.

and the #1 reason he hired adelman was an attempt (or shall i say "willingness"?) to convert a 50+ win jvg team into a 7-ticks-or-less phoenix suns version 2. just a recent example.

yup, he sure knows a lot bball.

 

Durvasa, they're role players. We've seen guys that weren't big offensive players in the regular season pick it up in the post season because when teams play you in a series, they're going to force a non star to play over their head. In 95 after the trade, Horry had some big games offensively and defensively and he wasn't known as a "get his own shot" type of guy either. Elie,Cassell, Smith, Herrera all picked games and moment when they impacted the game. That's what role players are supposed to do. That's when you see Bowen drop 16 in a pivotal game or Posey coming up with big shot after big shot. Its called being in the moment and that's what role players are suppose to do. In the conf finals against Sacramento, Horry and Fox both had double doubles in game 7. Saying what he can't do vs what he should do is the problem. If he can't step up when the team needs him to, what goood is that?

 

He made the trade, didnt he?

Huh? Where did you hear this?

Never said he did. You said he thinks he knows the game, which is contradicted by the leeway he gives Morey to sign/trade for players who don't put up big numbers. Nice attempt at moving the goal posts, though.

 

he signed off on the trade for battier, so he knows the game? good reasoning. are you going to give him credit too for all those prior trades or acquisitions of players such as pippen, meloney or cato?

we wanted to become phoenix suns #2. it was all over the news incl. the houston chronicle the time adelman was hired. wherer have you been?

giving leeway to his managers doesn't mean he doesn't think he knows the game. ...

look, unless you tell me you're leslie alexander himself, and you don't think you know a lot about bball, i'll stand on my OPINIONS and FEELINGS.

i don't know him, but i don't like les as the team owner. and based on what i've read and heard, i THINK he believes he knows a lot bball.

 

leebigez, they're role players. It is their job to play their role. Battier isn't a scorer, why do you want him to become more assertive offensively and do things outside his game? That's how games are lost.

Your the perfect example of someone who doesn't understand a stat beyond points scored. I'll quote that article again:

"When 82games.com ranked players in charges drawn in 2005-06 and 2006-07, Battier ranked in the league's top 10 both years. Lewis used Battier's defense on Kobe Bryant to illustrate his effectiveness, and looking at a larger sample of Lakers/Rockets matchups, Bryant has a 49.1 percent True Shooting Percentage in head-to-head meetings over the last three seasons, when his TS% against the rest of the league has been nearly 58 percent. More generally speaking, Battier's counterpart numbers as tracked by my BP colleague Bradford Doolittle (and available for each player this season on their statistics page) have been "off the charts good," showing opposing wing players to lose nearly 20 percent of their per-possession efficiency against Battier's teams over the last four years."

That is a lot more important to the team than a few more points.

 

well then i guess we should trade the whole team because none of them stepped up and scored 30 without yao around.

for one thing, horry is one of the best role players ever so saying someone didn't do what he did doesn't mean that much. second of all, as durvasa said, that whole team was getting open 3 after open 3 because of hakeem. watching the spurs game 6 and orlando game 4 they play on espn classic sometimes, i think i could've been a role player on those teams the double teams and open looks were coming so fast. outside of his epic 22 point game that carried the spurs to that win against the pistons, how many games did he have to step up in because the stars weren't getting it done? he always had a hakeem or duncan or shaq and kobe playing at peak, HOF form around to carry the load.

as for battier, you say he's been terrible in the playoffs. how? in his 2 years with us, he's averaged 10.1 and 9.3 in the regular season, and then 10.3, and 10.0 in the playoffs. and he's hit 45.6% of his 3's in the playoffs. so he scores the same and shoots better, and both series have been brutally low-scoring, with the rockets averaging 87.5 ppg vs a regular season average of 97 ppg. battier scored 15 in a close game 5 win the first year. he scored 16 in our close game 7 loss that same series. he scored 22 last year in game 1. i'm not seeing where he doesn't have some nice games. some nice games, some weak games, overall 10 ppg, kinda like a lot of role players.


and i know posey gets tons of play because all role players on championship teams are suddenly thought of as the best role players ever, but on that miami team he carried to the title, he averaged 7.3 ppg on 42% on 3's in the playoffs with basically the same points per minute as battier. of course he "makes plays" because he gets 22 playoff games with wade (and to a lesser extent shaq) playing super high level ball and carrying the team and every once in a while he hits a 3 with the shotclock running down after wade has drawn 3 people to him. just like horry was actually a pretty poor playoff 3 point shooter but is remember for all the ones he did hit because he got so many chances and got so many open looks.

and posey in the celtics run? 6.7 ppg. in only 22 mpg and thus quite respectable, but hardly stepping up and saving his team. he scored 18 in game 5 of the finals but never broke 12 other than that. and he must have been fairly confident they had the cleveland and detroit series' and thus was saving himself because he scored a combined 15 points in 6 games (2.5 ppg) over the end of the first and beginning of the next series.

and then the creme de la creme, bruce bowen. wow. if you were going to pick someone who is even more one-dimensional than battier and does absolutely nothing else but hit the occasional created open shot, you couldn't pick anyone better than bowen. he has never once cracked 7 ppg in the playoffs. not once. in the 3 years the spurs won the title, he's scored 6.9, 5.7, and 6.5 ppg. and if battier's 10-12 playoff PER is weak, bowen's 8.9/5.4(!!)/8.4 PER's are amazingly low. the guy plays his defense, shoots his corner 3, and lets duncan/ginobili/parker carry the load.


what battier does is fine for how this team was built. unfortunately, yao has played horrifically in one series and not at all in the other and tmac was no where close to what he was when we traded for battier in the 2nd series. we can't build a team where the role players can score 20 whenever we need it in case the stars suck and then also be guys who spread the floor and hit 40% of their 3's and then also play very high level defense while still paying for tmac and yao and staying somewhere under the luxury tax. battier is what he is. on a team where stars are playing like wade, shaq, hakeem, or duncan, he would be fantastic. just like posey, horry, and bowen look. but saying battier should take over for them when most role players do not do it is holding battier to an unfair standard.

 

Is it too much to ask him to be able to dribble a basketball relatively effectively or do anything on offense besides the corner 3 on a consistent basis? Apparently so...

 

Except for Rudy Gay. His game is flawless

 

I understand the point you're trying to make, but Shane Battier has never been a dominant defensive player like Ben Wallace was. Ben Wallace has 4 DPOY of the year awards while Shane has 0. Thus, his supposed strengths don't make up for his very visible shortcomings in my view.

What do you think the Rockets can get for Battier? Lottery pick?

 

Judging a player's defensive ability by the number of DPOY's they have is foolish. It goes to the guys who get a lot of steals or blocks. Battier doesn't get a lot of those, but he makes his opponent FAR less efficient. Read that quote I've posted two times now. He IS a dominant defensive and cohesive cog to our team.

Also judging Battier by what we could trade him for is short sighted. The whole point of these articles is how he's undervalued.

 

You can post all the articles and math equations you want, but I watch the games. I don't think there is anybody that matters in the NBA foolish enough to believe that Battier is a dominant defensive player. Just go look at what Dirk did to him when the Mavs played the Grizzlies in the playoffs a few years back. This was before his physical decline. To compound things, Battier's defender doesn't really have to work hard since all he does is stand in the corner on offense. Not to mention he disappears when it matters the most - in the playoffs. If Battier is such a tremendous asset, don't you think other teams would have caught on by now and offered something for him? The only rumor I heard was Battier for Outlaw a while back, but I think that was initiated by Morey. Don't think Portland would do that now even though they don't want Outlaw. Also, if Battier is so undervalued then why did the Rockets give up a lottery pick for him?