Battier has shot 46% on his three pointers in 13 playoff games as a Rocket. If he's being left open, history would indicate that he'll do alright. I don't think that's something the Rocket are concerned about.
going by history... or going by this year...? because going by history, shane was a decent offensive player in years past and rarely pass up good/open shots and would take them with little hesitation. so if tmac still played, do i go by history that he would perform well in the playoffs when we get there? obviously not.
I recall people complaining loudly about Shane Battier and his poor offense the last two seasons. Things haven't changed much. Battier was shooting right around 40% only a couple weeks back from 3-point range. He's been in a bad slump, and perhaps he's been a bit more streaky this season than in the past. But, again, I'm not too worried. He'll bounce back, and he'll probably be somewhere between 38% and 40% on threes by season's end, like last year.
well, not enough to warrant a "how low can battier go?" thread so i don't think it was that bad. me personally, i didn't complain much about shane the past few years b/c he actually WANTED to shoot the ball. he would want the ball in the post whenever he had mismatches, and shoot whenever he was open. that's the battier we need.
so you're argument is that if teams leave battier open and he misses all of his 3's, that won't be good? mindblowing stuff there. i think we all agree that shane should make his 3's, not miss them. missing open 3's isn't one of the "little things" people refer to battier doing. adding more to his offensive game or not, spacing the floor by hitting 39% of his 3's is still going to be his main job. based on an entire career and his first 2 playoffs with the rockets, he apparently can do this. does that mean he will this year? of course not. he just went 2-24 on 3's over a 6 game stretch. no one shoots their percentage exactly every game or every 5 games. maybe he'll go 2-24 again. or maybe he goes 14-24 because he's on streak. but missing open 3's is not going to prove battier, on the whole, isn't worth it. just like the rockets shooting 57% on ft's last night doesn't make us a bad free throw shooting team. part of battier's value is hitting his open 3's, so obviously we expect him to do that in the playoffs to still be valuable on offense. you act like he's chuck hayes where teams leave him open and still know he won't make it. people only leave battier if the situation guarding yao has gotten too bad for them. it's not like the scouting report is to give battier all the open looks he can handle.
clyde drexler commentating on the griz-rox game: "whoa, OJ mayo was surprised shane did something with the ball"--in regards to a drive earlier in the game. so yes, teams aren't paying much attention to shane. and over a 7 game series, they just might give him the chuck hayes treatment. i wouldn't doubt that at all. and shane's fg% by month: 39% -> 35% -> 39% -> 22%. i don't foresee him going 14-24 anytime soon. there's a thing called consistency and shane is consistent this year in regards to shooting. he's not like rafer where he'll shoot so well for 10-15 games, and just drops off the map for 10-15 games. shane actually is consistent with it this year.
as for the battier/kobe head to head thing, even taking into account ft's, kobe has been very inefficient against battier in their 8 games with battier in houston. his true shooting percentage against battier is 49.1%. if you're wondering where that lies on the efficiency spectrum, tmac's true shooting % this season was 49.2%. so it's pretty terrible. kobe has been between 56% and 58% against the rest of the league these last 3 seasons. and when you consider that he's using enough possessions at that efficiency to get 35 points, that's even better. that's a huge chunk of the lakers' possessions being very inefficient, which is pretty much the whole point of defense. that basically means we're barely having to double team (meaning kobe shoots a lot) and he still is terribly inefficient. one or the other would be pretty good. getting both is excellent.
kobe also sucked v. us in 04-05 and 05-06 when wesley was here. i posted up a stat where he averaged 21 ppg on 36% shooting v. wesley. since JVG has been here, we've been known for great team defense.
This simply isn't accurate. Shane's had his ups and downs with his shooting all year. He's just gone through a particular rotten stretch.
look i'm not criticizing b/c i hate the guy. i have never criticized him before this year. i want him to DO REALLY WELL. why? he plays big minutes for us and if shane plays well, we have a better chance of winning. i hope he shuts me up LOUDLY too.
Battier plays big minutes because he plays big defense. Why are you still stuck in that offense mode from him ?
he plays big defense v. great wing scorers. so i don't mind big minutes when we face teams with wing scorers. do you want him to play big minutes v. a team like utah with no wing scorers? (the team we have faced the past 2 years and could face again).
Does it matter if he passes them up more now? He's talking about efficiency, percentages, not ppg. A percentage can stay about the same whether he shoots a little or a lot. Tmac may have created open shots for shane, but i think our added offensive options will have the same effect as tmac creating for others. Before they doubled tmac and left others open, now they have to stick to the rest of the team.
First, everyone stops readin the moment you write "clyde drexler commentating.." Second, i wouldn't call those percentages consistent at all. Maybe consistently below average, but not consistent. Third, you're using his FG %, the majority of his shots he'll have are 3 pointers. For 3s his percentages are 41%, 33%, 43%, 12%. Showing he's on a major slump in march, but that sure isn't consistent with the rest of the season for which he's actually shot well from 3. And just wanted to add he's almost shooting 80% from the FT line this season.
and it's been Battier for the most part that has preached the defensive system to the rest since JVG has been gone...
i'm sure if we lost battier to a trade or something next yr (IF), our defense would still be top notch. i can GUARANTEE that.
That's what is mind boggling to me. Isn't 11 of the last 13 winning at very high percentage? We already have a god chance at winning and are doing it. That's why all these people complaining should wait until somthing is broken to fix it.
i'm thinking towards the playoffs bro. that's all i'm thinking. we've done well in the reg. season before.
I don't think anyone here is debating whether shane contributes or not like his publicist rv6, the debate is his contributions vs minutes played is the argument. Rick Fox was the same player during the laker title teams, but he was a 25 mins type of guy not 35. Its like rafer in that he's not terrible, he's terrible if he plays 35 mins. That's shane especially in a playoff setting. Durvasa brought up his usual great stats about shane making 46% of his 3's and that's cool, but utah doesn't leave shane. So here's the deal, how can shane be effective vs a team that never leaves him? That's what the rox have been facing with battier and head although battier has been better than head was.
