Im pretty sure it has been talked to death at this point. Theres like 3 posters on the board (you, Kwame and Untraceable) who keep re-opening the topic trying to quantify his effectiveness despite him being touted by top scouts of the game as a player whose impact can't be quantified. That seems like worse logic to me, no?
1) You make it sound like I was the one who started this thread, or like this was a thread that had nothing to do with Battier until I came in and changed the subject. Neither of those is the case. 2) Wasn't there this huge advertisement, er, article in the New York Times talking about how Battier's impact can be quantified (at least partially) by plus/minus? Now pro-Battier people are asking the rest of us to ignore plus/minus too?
i think you have to admit you're taking that a bit far for the sake of making your point...Chase's offense isn't even consistent itself to begin with, so its not like he's giving us 15 per every game. Now shane's "intangibles" include his leadership on and off the floor. That alone includes a lot of different things, like directing the team d and making other players aware of certain things on offense. And those two can also be broken down even more. You always say that you only need to watch a game to know how involved a player is, but the game is only the execution of a game plan they've been preparing and you definitely don't see that part. and as far as i know humans only have one set of eyes and they can't selectively view different things with each eye when watching a game. So that beng said, even when you watch the game there's only so much and so many players can you see at a time, The camaera itself also limits your view of the whole court and every player at any given moment. So you would have to tape the game and go back to watch it a few times to really see everything and even then you'd miss whatver the camera didn't catch. So like i've said before, i trust that the guys who really do tape the game, watch it several times, acquire different camera angles, and are involved and present in the preparation of every game will have a better idea of how much battier really brings... And so far those guys want to keep him around and give him big minutes.
To be an impact +/- guy you also can't be a zero on offense. Battier is a reliable 3-point-shooter. He makes a high percentage of his post ups. His granny 70s style dribbling is less prone to turnovers. His passing is deliberately without imagination, which is also less prone to turnovers. He is capable of jumpers off the dribble and slashing if he focused on it...but he expends so much energy on defense I know he is coasting a little bit on offense...
Whether you started the thread or not is irrelevant, In your time here I have seen you make one post non Battier related, one post, and I was literally shocked when I saw it. Even your sig is Battier related. I have seen intense statistical research on your part for this aspect of the game only and never anything else. When one takes all these observations into account it becomes clear that your intent is not to engage in general bball discussion but rather to slander one player for whatever reason. Once deemed a "hater" for lack of a better word, people will just begin ignoring your arguments, because they know you are just looking to nit pick his weaknesses, as opposed to focusing on his strengths. Objectivity goes a long way my friend.
I welcome anyone trying to quantify how a player is helping the team. Hoop numbers has adjusted +/- for the last 3 seasons, weighted more heavily towards last season. http://hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisV...&leaders=True&year=2009optimizedNow_multiYear Overall, Battier scores in the top 40 out of 387 players who played last year. The results indicate that he has a positive impact on both ends of the court. Since we like to compare him to Rudy Gay, well ... you can see for yourself where he rates. Not a huge surprise when one considers the difference in winning% between the two teams since that trade. Gay's offensive impact is good, as one might expect, but on defense it's dreadful. First month this year, you're right that Battier does not grade out well by the adjusted +/-. He's acknowledged that he hasn't been able to jump like he wants to. We'll see how it goes the rest of the way.
At least they're finally admitting, albeit, in an underhanded fashion, that Battier's stat production took a hit. I was sick of the intangibles excuse.
It would be a big mistake to rate how good a player Battier is by relying on statistics alone. Statistics are for rigid minds.
Durvasa, The link you posted, is it showing the rank of players based on how much they help their team? How can you tell how much the team is helping him?. And....Gary Payton is listed??? WTF. I dont think its fair to compare winning % between the Rockets and the Griz when one team was entering into rebuilding mode and the other was touted as a contender. Do you know what the winning % before/after Battier's arrival looks like for the Rockets? I wonder how it will change after this season. Also, Scola is listed at 121, how do they factor him in with only two years in the league? Lots of questions, this is over my head, just trying to understand.
Wow. I knew Rudy Gay was bad defensively, but ... wow. He is absolutely horrid. It's obvious he has no interest in even trying to defend properly.
Its a way to estimate how much each player is contributing to his team's point differential based on how the score changes with different combinations of players on the floor. Its not a be-all, end-all, but its something to look at to get an alternate view of what each player is contributing to his team's bottom line. He's included a standard error on each rating as well -- double that error, and you can get approximately a 90% confidence interval. The less you play, the less reliable the numbers are -- that's why the standard error on Gary Payton is so high. So this model estimates Payton to be somewhere between a -4 and +3, with a greater chance he was negative. It doesn't tell us a whole lot, in that case. The site does a better job of explaining it than I probably would: http://hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisView?analysis=RAPM&discussion=True
Durvasa, do they have the stats when shane played his first couple of years and the grizz were terrible? I think when the team is terrible or isn't winning, everyone has a negative effect.
It doesn't quite go back to Battier's rookie year. Dan Rosenbaum (who now works for the Cavs) linked to his adjusted +/- ratings for 02/03 and 03/04 seasons on 82games back in 2004 (with 03/04 weighted twice as heavily). Its missing now, but web.archive.org has a cached copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20040803114138/http://www.uncg.edu/bae/people/rosenbaum/NBA/wv2t1.txt Specifically for Battier's 02/03 season (his second year, when the Grizzlies won just 28 games), Rosenbaum found his defensive impact to be very high -- 4.4 points better than league average on defensive end. http://www.82games.com/rosenbaum3.htm I don't know about Battier's rookie season, though it wouldn't surprise me if his plus/minus stats weren't as favorable. Rookies tend to not rate well by these statistics even if they are putting up nice box score numbers (as Battier seemingly did his first year), and for good reason. Plus/minus stats do a better job of picking up on the "rookie mistakes" and the "intangibles" than the boxscore.
do you really believe that or you just want to make a point? It's a team game, one guy isn't going to make all the difference. If one guy, and i don't mean battier specifically, but any one guy, does well, and the rest don't, then the team will still suck.
A rigid mind is one that doesn't take all factors into consideration, including statistics. It is a metric to be used, not an "end all, be all" for every answer. Statistics don't measure heart, they don't measure "intangibles," but they can reflect those things. They are a tool in the toolbox and while durvasa enjoys delving into them, he also watches the games. Something to remember, whether one agrees with him, or not.
He has been playing with a messed up ankle (same one he got surgery on last year), that's not news. And he doesn't have Yao Ming. But I'm glad his legs are feeling better. That's what older players have to worry about.
