People close to the Rockets compare Battier on defense to a quarterback. He's always calling out the plays, communicating with teammates, and helping guys get in the right position. He's like a coach on the floor. In his own limited way, he does similar things on offense. How do you put a value on that using stats? As fans, how can we possibly know what means to the team without sitting right there on the bench, taking in all the sights and sounds on the court, and knowing what the team is trying to do each possession? It's hard, and that's why it doesn't make much sense for us to try to sum up Battier by just looking at the boxscore. He makes for a great scapegoat when the team isn't playing great, because he's the one guy who's hard to evaluate using the available stats in the boxscore. It's so much easier to point the finger at a guy who isn't scoring a lot, rather than the guy who's missing assignments on defense or isn't in the right spot on offense.
I don't think it's fair to just trash on the OP like that. Sure the stats don't tell most of the story in this case, but what of the conclusion? We know Battier's offensive contribution is down compared to his previous years. Unless you want to make the silly assertion that his intangibles on offense have gone up in favor of his declining efficiencies in shooting and per minute scoring, rebounding, and assisting. If you could find a way into the Rockets' bunker I bet they would also tell you that his isolated +/- is down relative to his norm. Another thing which stats have no way of telling us is how Battier is doing defensively. He certainly still helps us in this regard--just look how much our team improved when he came back into the lineup as opposed to when he was out in the beginning of the year. But when I watch games I get the feeling that also on this end, he is not what he used to be in years past. He is getting beat a lot by his man, seems to react slower to the first step, and oftentimes isn't even guarding the other team's best player like he used to, thanks to us having Ron now for that. I think collectively you can attribute a lot of his decline to the foot injury he's been carrying with him throughout the past year. Unlike T-Mac he is not a whiner, and if there's anyone on the team you can trust to work as hard as necessary to get through his struggles it's Battier. But at some point we have to look at the obvious--Battier's play is down this year, and who knows if it'll ever be coming back up, even to the level he had last year.
Kwame is just a battier hater TRYING to find concrete proof that Battier sucks. However, once again, he failed. You only posted this to counter the "Battier to the rescue" thread. 1. If Battier is such an offensive liability why are the rockets increasing their ppg ? Did you know they are at about 99?? Did you know that they have 7 players pretty much averaging 10ppg or more?? 2. Your using FULL SEASON statistics. Battier played for several weeks early on and he was out of it, hurting, not in basketball shape. Then he came back later, hurting less, but still hurting, and not quite yet in basketball shape. He's been back to full strength for about 3 weeks now, why dont you use THOSE stats instead?? I bet you were just waiting for him to have a bad game so you can start this thread. In jan he shot 33% from 3, in Feb he shot 43%, it's too early in march to say he's going to continue to have a bad month. How about mentioning that he averages less than 1 turnover a game? He guards the toughest swingman almost every night, yet he only averages about 2 fouls a game. Offensive rebounding?? is there a stat for TIPPING THE BALL RIGHT TO YOUR TEAMMATE? I know i hear worrell at least 3 times a game, sometimes more, say "and there goes battier with another tip to his teammate". Why does he tip it instead of grabbing it?? Because he's often out in the perimeter guarding players, when a shot goes up he runs into the paint, doesn't have time to establish position, but manages to stick his arm in there and tip the ball. Yes,battier can't do some things, and guess what, THAT's WHY HE DOESNT TRY! He's trying to be efficient and do what the team lacks, not what the team already has a lot of, like scoring!
I like Battier as a guy, but he is a very average basketball player. I don't think he is the problem on the team though, so I don't think he is someone who will 'drag' down the team. So his shortcomings are tolerable. I do have an issue with his career, however: he is also yet another Rocket who is a second round virgin. Some of it at least has to be on him (didn't he get swept two playoffs in a row? Not even one win?)
Battier is a smart person who is playing the mistake-free basketball at the most of his time. If you do that, the fans like you, so does your boss. One of the reasons that we can not pass the first round, Battier should take some blames, but you never see them. I say the coach need tell him to be more aggressive on the offensive end.
battier is only mentioned whenever we play superior wing players, which is why the announcers never even mentioned his name against the jazz series. thats why we also were shopping him for a travis outlaw. generally, you're SF is supposed to be your most athletic player and most versatile scorer.
The rockets have more scorers than they have had probably since 05, their offense just as good as then, if not better. He doesnt have to score, and he knows that. He'll be the first one to tell you he'd rather have brooks drive or wafer shoot, there's nothing bad about knowing who's better at what. Sure sometimes he hesitates, but he's never really disappointed in crunch time, that's when he always does what's really needed. During games he may pass up a shot to give others an opportunity or get them involved. He was also injured and comingback from rehab. It's very clear that his bad shooting and lack of mobility were mostly due to coming back from the surgery and not because he's washed up. He's had like 3 or 4 bad game in a row this month, but the month and a half prior to that he was back to his old self, so 4 games by the 7th day of the month isn't enough to say he's regressed or that the previous month and a half was a fluke.
He didn't get swept, his team did. He's never been a go to guy or franchise type player, he's always been a role player and the teams he's been on haven't been that strong, so it's not a situation where he failed to come trough for his team, he played his role, but the real go to guys on the team either didn't show or the team as a whole wasn't capable enough.
Then you should appeal to fire coach rick A. Les already fired JVG. They both played Shane a lots in the same way. RA eavn start shane over RonRon. How dare he? How stupid is he? Does he has any BBIQ? How can he be top 10 most winning NBA coach or something close? Uninformed fans are blind. Those 'informed' fans are more fan to read.
I just think like this, I can understand what people see in Shane. He's a well spoken,well liked politician type that's hard to not like. The people will blinders will always come up with statistical evidence of how he helps the team. Bottomline is stats don't tell the entire story either way. You can look at a boxscore and see shane did nothing and was a +8. You can also look at the same box and see luis was a -10. Then u can look and see a guy in the game for 2mins and was a +6 cause the team went on a 6-0 run. What I do know is everytime we play the jazz, he takes the night off. What I do know is his man is the one sinking in yao's lap. What I do know is that he can't dribble,can't pass, and will only shoot if he can read the spaulding on the ball. I'm not saying he's the anti christ of basketball, I just think he's a 20min bench player. The defense has been supbar all year even with him in there. I think adleman sees it, just like he saw alston and hayes limitation. Don't be surprised if he's traded or they just upgrade the position and he's a bench player. Shane Battier is a bench player and that's cool. He can watch, analyze, and come in to change things in the game. I think the reason Kwame,Gater, and I criticize him is that u expect more on you investement. I watched Ronnie Brewer take last night take advantage of a post player lik Boozer. He was cutting,slashing, and finishing. He plays very good defense, a team player, yet he's athletic and skilled enough to start the offense or run it so williams can be free. Spacing for yao can either be from 3 pt shooters or opponets scared to leave a man all over the court. Not bringing Gay into it, but what was wrong with Ronnie Brewer? Eventually, that's the way Adelman is going to go. He's going to have slashers and finishers which is needed to run the offense he wants. That's why people was all goo goo ga ga over wafer. He brings something that the rox hadn't had in years. Hopefully this summer, they can get a mini vet that can do it more consistently than wafer.
Shane is good for 2 things. DEFENSE, Grittiness and good 3 point shooting. He's been rushing his shot, only because he can get away with it sometimes, but it's not something you wanna consistently do, and now he's seeing the consequences.
i agree, sooner or later this team is going to be constructed with slashers and scorers because thats the kind of players adelman wants (and is needed to win a championship). we were close to trading battier last offseason if i recall but it fell through. the only untouchable guy is yao.
http://basketballvalue.com/teamplay...summary&sortnumber=90&sortorder=DESC&team=HOU According to basketballvalue.com, Battier's 2-year adjusted +/- (heavily weighted to this season) is currently +4.91 with a standard error of 3.12. I think that means, according to that model, there's a 95% chance that Battier "contributes" roughly between -1.3 and +11.15 points per 100 poss to our scoring margin, relative to an average player. To compare, Wafer has a +5.9 with 3.9 standard error (so 95% chance he's contributing between -1.9 and 13.7). For Artest, the range is between -0.3 and +11.03. I know that doesn't tell us a whole lot, other than all three have very likely been positive contributers for us this season. Still thought I'd put that out there, since the Rockets basketball ops people apparently make use of adjusted +/- (perhaps they have more sophisticated techniques to calculate it and reduce the error). Anyways, ultimately, the decisions on who plays is going to be Adelman's.
I'm not going to say that's the only way to win a ring, but a team has to have enough of them that can attack the basket and draw fouls. In the playoffs, when you play the same team over and over, they adjust. Utah plays the rox the same way. They play Yao one on one and play physical, they used to tilt the defense to tracy and stay close enough to close out on the shooters. This time around, they will play the rox pretty much the same except they'll tilt to run and they have to hinor scola, but they'll never respect battier to do anything offensively. I just think the psuedo offense has some good things going on in it and it seems as though yao is getting better passing the ball, but it would create easier buckets if we had some finishers and slashers off those motions. Barry can run the offense, but who is he blowing by and finishing through? Wafer is still young and developing, but he at least attacks the rim. The Outlaw deal wouldve been perfect, but the rox pulled back if I'm not mistaken.
Shane will be the first to tell us that he is struggling with his shot. We all know the defense and the intangibles that he brings to the court, but the Rockets would be even better if they could get him back to making those open looks. Last night wouldn't of been that close of game if Shane & the team had shot the 3 better. I like to see Shane make 2-3 three pointers a night and everything would be just fine. I love what Shane brings to the court, but please don't defend his recent poor shooting with his defense or his intangibles. I know Shane wouldn't!
Battier will earn about $7 million next year. For similar money, who do you think we could acquire to improve that wing position? Artest could be back as well.
