Great story for Morey. Use it or lose it -- now is the perfect time. Trade Battier for a young center to back up Yao. I don't think Shane is enough to get us a decent point guard or Rudy Gay, but the dream lives on.
To be fair to cabbage, he was saying that the writer tried to use these facts to "prove" Battier's worth. And I agree that those numbers are misleading because of all the other factors contributing to those records. That said, I have always been a Battier defender. People who don't like him (or more accurately, people who don't like the trade that got him) usually say how he doesn't have the "tangibles" and those "moneyball" geeks don't really know basketball, etc. etc. But those people usually don't really make any effort to understand what guys like Morey are doing. It is an undisputable fact that under two very different coaches, Battier is still one of the most played players for the Rockets since he became a Rocket. Both JVG and Adelman obviously see something those Battier critics don't see.
Shane is struggling this year and even his + - is getting lower than before. His outside shooting is going down fast. I agree with the cabbage. I do appreciate him but a lot of people overlook his weaknesses all the time. He can't bring back much in any trade despite his intangibles and professionalism.
ryan bowen also saw lots of playing time under JVG. i don't think anyone thinks he's a vital part of any team. the bottom line, and the point that cabbage made quite well, is that yes, battier does some great things for the team. but he's not some cure-all that turns teams into instant winners just by his very presence. he is expendable and there are plenty of players in the nba who would help this team as much if not more than battier. and you can debate whether or not the trade for rudy gay was worth it at the time, but it is pretty hard to argue now that anybody in the nba would rather have shane battier than rudy gay, daryl morey included.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in that article. I think the Rockets are trying to look at the game in the right way. It's ironic that the criticism Morey gets is that he only looks at numbers without considering the basketball element. In fact, it seems that what he's doing is very much the opposite. Instead of focusing numbers, he's trying to understand, deeply, what those numbers really convey about how the player is helping his team. There seems to be a huge focus for him and the team on watching tape (clearly, the Rockets make significant use of the Synergy scouting service, for instance). It's all about getting at information in the most accurate way possible. People confuse that "information" with "stats" we see in the box score, but that really isn't what he cares about. So, we have players like Shane Battier or Chuck Hayes that don't put up great stats that Morey appears to have a special affinity towards. As fans, we question why their stats have dropped so much in recent years. Maybe it' because the team is deemphasizing the collection of traditional stats. [rquoter] When I ask Morey if he can think of any basketball statistic that can’t benefit a player at the expense of his team, he has to think hard. “Offensive rebounding,” he says, then reverses himself. “But even that can be counterproductive to the team if your job is to get back on defense.” It turns out there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly. “We think about this deeply whenever we’re talking about contractual incentives,” he says. “We don’t want to incent a guy to do things that hurt the team” — and the amazing thing about basketball is how easy this is to do. “They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for,” he says. He laughs. “It’s a tough environment for a player now because you have a lot of teams starting to think differently. They’ve got to rethink how they’re getting paid.” [/rquoter]
What do a few recent games tell us about his +/-? Doesn't that require a large sample of games to be useful? Battier isn't totally himself, though. He's missed a lot of games, which is unusual for him, and he's not shooting as efficiently as he used to. He's still been a very good defender for us, though.
Explain please, must be too subtle for me: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AnsoVaR686l84rngepCV__.RPKB4?gid=2009021110 http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AgqiB2jRTxmFAV.zmGNjh0yRPKB4?gid=2009020710 http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AhdSFHVu6VXRhnX_Ul5DBe6RPKB4?gid=2009020429 http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AriVIiy35x5jgp1pqeyyqb.RPKB4?gid=2009020915 http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=Ap1L_4oyVkE5z5nCVpKZa86RPKB4?gid=2009020310 Fort the season, his on/off +/- is at +6.1, better than last season (unadjusted), actually.
Btw, looking outside the scope of just Battier or even the Rockets, that article was truly enthralling. One of the best sports pieces I've read in a long time. Love the discussion of how basketball is the only sport where helping yourself might not help the team (never really thought of it that way), the analysis of stats, Morey's vision----it's all great stuff. Cool for the Rockets to get the A Game from a premiere writer/publication.
If you look in the losses you can see the differences between the wins. That minus 21 against the Bucks stands out.
I don't disagree with you that his injuries have made things more difficult for him. He will do better hopefully when he gets all right. I think the cabbage has made some good comments though.
Here's a paragraph from the article that explains why Morey may be trying to trade for Vince Carter: One well-known statistic the Rockets’ front office pays attention to is plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. In its crude form, plus-minus is hardly perfect: a player who finds himself on the same team with the world’s four best basketball players, and who plays only when they do, will have a plus-minus that looks pretty good, even if it says little about his play. Morey says that he and his staff can adjust for these potential distortions — though he is coy about how they do it — and render plus-minus a useful measure of a player’s effect on a basketball game. A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.” He names a few other players who were a plus 6 last season: Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady.
I had the exact same reaction. It's like a father chuckling while watching his 3-year-old toddler try and throw a football. "Atta boy! Good throw! Now you've got it!"
Funny -- I could have sworn that was a 1-star rating on this thread before. Now it shows two 5-star ratings.
Fantastic article. My respect for Battier has doubled. And I'm now convinced it will take a trade of Gasol-like proportions for Morey to part with Shane.
You don't think the statement 'And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.' is a disingenuous presentation of our circumstances after the acquisition? The author seems to be supporting the statement that we 'acquired' the ability to win largely in due part to Battier with our significant increase in wins, oblivious to the fact that we regained a healthy Mac and were no longer counting on the likes of David Wesley as we had done the year before. I don't think anyone on this board would argue that our struggles in 2005-2006 were anything but an aberration. You're presenting my argument at too extreme a degree. I'm not saying the author is claiming Battier 'guarantees a win.' I completely recognize that he does little things to contribute. I'm not part of the fringe radical sector here that deems Battier completely worthless - I recognize he contributes despite the appearances. My criticism of the argument in my first post, was that the presentation of his contributions as greatly overblown esp. through that disingenuous use of our records. Like I said, the article does a great case at debunking the claim by some that he gives us nothing.
