Does the Battier/Gay trade still bother/frustrate/infuriate you to this day?

Gerald Green would be putting up great numbers in Memphis.........who cares?

 

yeah im more dissapointed that we couldnt get brandon roy. rudy gay i know we werent going to draft...

 

no he wouldn't. he didn't put up good numbers on a bad boston team and he didn't put up any kind of numbers on a worse minnesota team.

stop trying to lump rudy gay into the convenient stereotype of underachieving freak athlete, because that's not who he is.

 

Yeah, Rudy Gay would probably be a great 3rd option because this dude can really play, but I can't say I am not happy with this trade.

Battier gives us so many thing. First of all is his team and 1on1 defense. It is great to put him on opponent's best scorer and not have to worry about that.

Battier is also a great 'fighter', hustle guy who can hit those 3s. The only problem is his offense, I think we need a more offensive player.

 

U just don't give away #8 pick in the draft for a guy that is below avg offensively and good on defense. The rox could have had the defensive backup like posey, udoke and guys like that to backup him and tracy. I think what people are forgetting is the rox were already a great defensive team before Battier ever stepped foor in Toyota Center. I mean 6'0 david wesley did the same thing defensively for this team as battier. If u don't believe me, go look up the defensive stats for opp fg%, and ppg for the rox the 2 prior yrs to Battier. It was a unnecessary move that have this team still looking for a player of gay's talent.

 

http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2008.html

2007-08

Rudy Gay
Win Shares - 12
Loss Shares - 28 (3rd Most)
Offensive Rating - 106
Defensive Rating - 110


Shane Battier
Win Shares - 24
Loss Shares - 4
Offensive Rating - 117
Defensive Rating - 103

 

Uh oh ... you're going to give leebigez convulsions with that post. Low-usage, high-efficiency players that play on good defensive teams will generally look good by those measures.

The most striking thing for me is just opposing trends in win/loss record for the two teams since the trade.

Rockets: 34 wins, 52 wins, 55 wins
Memphis: 49 wins, 22 wins, 22 wins

 

Comparing Shane Battier to Posey, Udoke, and Wesley by saying they are good defenders is like comparing Wilt Chamberlain to Rik Smits by saying they are both good scorers. Battier was, by objective analysis, the best defensive player in the league in 2006-07 and among the top 3 in 2007-08. Posey and Udoke weren't close, and Wesley is out of the league.

 

shane battier houston rockets
rudy gay memphis grizzlies

 

this is funny, i was thinking about battier watching posey in boston. i still can't believe the rockets let posey get away, and posey was great on the break.

 

By the stats, Rudy Gay made a horrible Memphis team 6.9 points/game worse than his replacement. Shane Battier made a pretty good Houston team 3.5 points/game better than his replacement.

 

It is amazing how people only look at PPG and think they understand production of a TEAM game.

Battier is the better TEAM player, he makes the entire TEAM better....Gay is a good player with individual skills, but until he makes his TEAM better he is just a guy who can score the ball.

As for the point about how to make a team better, think of it this way.

If you score 21 ppg, it looks good on the stats page the next day until people realize that they guy you were guarding scored 25ppg......

So, while his stats look good in some sense, he is not contributing to winning basketball.

JVG is 100% right on this subject, if you took Gay and Battier and traded them now...

Houstons wins would decrease and Memphis wins would increase.....

Battier makes the overall TEAM better than Gay does.

DD

 

Since we are offering opinions, mine is that every Rocket management staff member from owner to coach should have been taken out in public and horsewhipped for an hour each. Other than that, it's spilt milk now.

 

look forward and move on. stop living in the past.

 

We should have at least recieved a second round pick in the deal. Absent that, at the least, I would have walked away.

 

Gay is also on a team where he is the #1 or #1.5 option.

Battier is on a team where he is the #4 or #5 option behind alston tmac yao and scola.

Can't compare the way you are comparing. Gay would have numbers around Battier's this year if he played with the rockets.

 

I hated the trade the minute the words were leaving Ric Bucher's mouth on draft night...I hate the trade just as deeply...probably more...today.

Jeff Van Gundy attributed the trade solely to Morey. And I believe him.

You find players like Battier...players such as Posey, Bowen, Udoka, Azubuike, Matt Barnes, etc...with MLE $...NOT a freakin' #8 pick in a deep draft.

And you certainly DON'T prioritize a high-end role player unless you are drop-dead 100% sure of the health of your two stars.

Battier IMO is one of the most over rated players in the NBA. That's demonstrated by the high media ranking in DPoY and only 2nd team All Defense when the coaches are doing the voting. And that's his highest ranking ever.

What I find pathetic is people that run to obscure stats to support their opinion of Battier. How about we look at how stats guru John Hollinger ranks Rudy Gay vs Battier?

Read 'em and weep...Hollinger's PER ranks Rudy as the 12th best SF in the NBA. Battier comes in at 49. Behind Linas Kleiza, Bonzi Wells, Matt Harpring, Wally Szczerbiak, Andres Nocioni, Jared Dudley, Jarvis Hayes, Kyle Korver, Mickael Pietrus, Bostjan Nachbar, Luke Walton, Desmond Mason, Ricky Davis, and James Posey.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/holl...inger/statistics?sort=per&pos=sf&seasonType=2

When you go to the Lottery, you should come back with gold not glue.

 

that my friends is a quotable

 

Really, really disingenuous. Hollinger recognizes the weakness of PER, and knows that Rudy Gay is a bad player. PER is a combination of measurables, and players that are more involved in the offense get better PER's regardless with little regard to opponent performance and efficiency. Those "obscure stats" are directly related to the scoreboard.

I don't have to run to stats to understand that Battier is a much better basketball player than Gay. I watch the games. I watched them play head-to-head, and watched Battier take Gay to the rim at will on offense, and completely take him out of the game on defense.

Rudy Gay is the new Juwan Howard, he looks a lot better on paper than in person, and some bad GM (or one more worried about star power than winning) will give him a big contract and he'll be regarded as the biggest albatross in the league.

 

Hollinger also ranked Battier among the best defensive players in the league...

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insi...umnist=hollinger_john&page=All-Defense-080410

I think to use PER as an example of why Rudy Gay is better than Shane Battier you should understand it better.

PER is strictly a box score stat line.

And I know you don't read a box score to tell you what happened in a game, you watch it.

So to say that Hollinger puts those players above Battier in value is not true.. he puts them above him in box score or "fantasy" value.