Is Shane Battier one of the best role players ever?

Battier is a Duke product that suits coack K's system.

Battier isn't another world above Ryan Bowen, in playoffs Bowen could guard Dirk, Battier could not. It seems numbers disconnected you from facts.

 

There are no guarantees for a championship in the NBA.

 

Did you point out a fact? I didn't catch it. "Bowen could guard Dirk, Battier could not" are gross generalizations. Not facts.

If you think we'd be just about as good if we replaced Battier with Ryan Bowen, fine. I'll go ahead and disagree with that.

 

Someone who disputed the claim that Battier is a good role player asked for the stat guys to check. durvasa has done a great job of providing stats which indicate that he has a great positive impact on our success. Interestingly, whoever asked for durvasa has failed to show up in this thread again.

Edit: It was SamFisher. No surprise there.

 

Battier is a good player. He defense has postive impact. I'm just against blowing it out of proportion with statistical misinterpretation. So what the Rockets allows almost 9 less points with Battier in the lineups, how many of that 9 points is contributed by Yao Ming, T-Mac and Chuck Hayes? Can't tell, huh?

Alston-McGrady-Battier-Hayes-Yao is our best defensive lineup. McGrady-Hayes-Yao are the main impact defensive players. Battier has the luck to play with this unit a lot and his +/- numbers look good.

 

clutchfans are underestimating shane battier

 

If you watched the series against Dallas, you know what I mean. Bowen was disrupting Dirk's game in the playoffs. How is that gross generaliztions? Is it also a gross generalization that with or without Battier the Rockets are a top defensive team?

You know that's not my intention. I'm only comparing their defense. Battier is a better player overall.

 

I was surfing 82games.com and saw this, when T-Mac is on the court, his team allows 101.4 points per 100 possessions. When he is off the court, it's 101.5. The difference is minimal at 0.1 point per 100 possessions. Does it mean T-Mac has no impact on defense? Does it mean his backup plays defense as well as he does? Does it mean T-Mac is one dimensional? How about asking Dan Rosenbaum this question and watch how he adjusts the +/- numbers to make it fit into reality?

About creating extra possessions, how does the +/- fans explain that points scored per 100 possessions with Shane on or off the court has minimal difference? Aren't we supposed to score a lot more if Shane gives us a lot of extra possessions?

 

Sorry, forget about the last part about Shane's extra possessions, I made a mistake.

 

You guys can sift through the statistical minutia all day for all I care. The bottomline line has never varied. The Rockets were a playoff team with Swift and Gay or with Battier. If he doesn't take you to the 2nd round, he doesn't matter. If he doesn't take you to the 2nd round, comparisons to Elie, Horry, Bowen, Rodman, etc are not worth the time it took me to type this.

 

A wing player's defensive worth is not measured by their ability to stop Dirk Nowitzki in a playoff series. Further, it's a bogus comparison. You're comparing his output in different years, and the assumption is Dirk was guarded strictly one on one. That isn't the case at all for any superstar player, particularly in the playoffs.

 

Check his nerd stats for the playoffs the last three years.

 

or even a chuckie brown who stepped up and played great defense on charles barkley when the rockets needed. until he does something like that, he's just a good all around player.

 

Do you know if/where those Rosenbaum/WINVAL ratings are published for last year or this year? The only ones I have ever seen are the really old 2004 ones that are archived on 82games.com.

 

all the stats are silly, how many rings does battier have?

 

Why not? Opportunity cost. We gave up Swift, who is a 4 and Gay, who is rebounding better, at least on a per minute basis. One of the things that trading for Battier did for us is leave a gaping hole at the 4.

It's great that Hayes is stepping up and all, but the guy is foul prone. And when he goes out (or he didn't step up this year), we're left with Scott Padgett.

You know, it's impossible to argue a guy that argues only on "intangibles." Yes, it is true that some intangibles are difficult to measure, but most are not, though it may take a little creativity.

For example, Battier puts a hand in the opposing players' faces, that's great. If you tell me Kirk Snyder can't do it to the same effect, then let's make the assumption that the opposing player shoots at a 50% clip. Then Battier just save a point. Got a steal? If we convert at the same rate, he got us a point.

And that's what I'm asking you to tell me. How much is Battier's total "intangibles" worth to you? Because if his intangibles are worth so much, why isn't he the star instead of Yao/TMac? And you have to do this incrementally over Swift/Gay.

Even though we want to win pretty and dominate our opponents. That's the bottom line. The scoreboard. If Battier's intangibles can't impact the scoreboard to any appreciative extent, maybe they aren't worth that much after all.

An event study is, put simply, the impact of a particular event on the performance/stats of an entity. It's as simple as that.

And many factors impact PPG/RPG, etc, precisely right. Which is why I cringe when people use PPG to compare which players are better. For example, if Yao scores 20 points in a game, he probably did better than if Antoine Walker does the same, because he shoots withint the flow of the game and takes high percentage shots.

All those stats can be used, but all they are would be potential starting points. Nothing more.

 

IMO we gutted our future to acquire Shane Battier. Shane is the type of solid player every team wants, but there are so many other "solid" players out there who could give us what he is giving us and at a lower cost.

With that idiotic draft day trade, we lost a very athletic (albeit not a smart) player in Swift and a future star in Rudy Gay. As it turns out, we also could have had J.R. Smith rather than Kirk Snyder.

I won't go into the Mike James fiasco, although I can't help thinking about a lineup of Mike James, J.R. Smith, T-Mc, Swift and Yao -- four players who can get their own shot and one Great Wall under the basket. With rookies Gay, Novak and V-Span and near-rookie Luther Head to change the "look," the Rockets would have been awesome.

Before the slings and arrows fall, let me point out I do like both Battier and Snyder as players. My point is that we could easily have been so much better -- and for less money.

 

I don't follow the logic here. If you're arguing that we gave up some rebounding in making the trade, fine. I'll point out that our PF rebounding this season is actually more than it was last year (mainly because trading away Swift made way for Hayes to get more minutes). Our rebounding as a team is better than it was the last two years.

I think you're overestimating the importance of rebounding at the individual level. As a team, our rebounding has been fine with Battier on the court -- actually better than the opponents. Maybe Battier can grab a few more rebounds, but I don't think it would have much of an impact on rebounding at the team level (particularly if all he's doing is grabbing defensive rebounds that would otherwise go to teammates).

Good defense over the course of an entire game adds up. And if Battier is improving our point differential even by 3 or 4 points, that's very important. Over the course of the season, that could be the difference between a 53 win team and a 45 win team.

No one is saying Battier is more important to the team than Yao or McGrady. I think he's a very valuable role player. Because he's very solid and able to play 36-38 minutes a game, I'd put him third on the team in importance.

Except the evidence over the years is that he does impact the scoreboard, much more so than the typical NBA player.

Using data updated as of 11/24, I looked at the Rockets point differential with Battier-Yao-McGrady on the court (but not Snyder), and then with Snyder-Yao-McGrady on the court (but not Battier). It's early in the season, so maybe you want to take this with a grain of salt (I expect you will). Still, if what you say is true and Battier is not much better than Snyder (and, in fact, his individual numbers suggest he's worse than Snyder), then the Battier-Yao-McGrady combination should not be much more effective than the Snyder-Yao-McGrady combination. Particularly because the former should be playing more often against starter-quality lineups. However:

Code:

[B]
player combination                  min  off/48   def/48   net/48[/B]
Battier-Yao-McGrady (no Snyder)     241  100.3    86.0     +14.3 
Snyder-Yao-McGrady (no Battier)     64   99.5     104.6    -5.1

Actually, Snyder's +/- has been consistently low throughout the year even though his individual numbers are pretty good (for a role player). If Battier is merely average, is Snyder really that far below average?

 

I guess all our players suck, since none of them have a ring.

 

Since he took a job with an NBA team, I don't think he's making them publically available any more. Too bad. But I suspect other public sources for adjusted +/- will turn up eventually.