this team has a point guard who can't shoot, a superstar who's in a slump from last season, and to make up for it they have shooting power forward who can't rebound. bassackwards
pgabriel, I know what you are talking about. I had doubt whether Battier should play PF full-time. I still have doubt. I think JVG has doubt too. I am sure if we had a PF who is better than Battier, JVG would shift Battier and TMac from 4-3 to 3-2. It's that simple. Battier is a better defender than both Howard and Swift, even at the 4. He is a weaker rebounder, no doubt. But you are trading rebounding for all the other better things. I'd say it is stronger, not weaker. You can't just look at one player's number and judge our overall rebounding. That said, I agree that playing Battier at 4 is not the ideal. But it is the best we can do with what we have. I'd rather have Battier than either Howard or Swift in there.
If you want to assign responsibility to Battier for what Okur (or Boozer) did, you should look at what they did while Battier was matched up against them. Okur, for instance, did most of his damage in the second half when Battier was guarding Kirilenko. And, again, winning/losing individual matchups statisically isn't the only thing to look at.
I'm sorry, that **** just doesn't fly with me. Alright, suppose Battier guarded Boozer/Okur/who have you wellk, how does that make up for his ineptitude on the glass? I'm not asking to crash the offensive glass, what about defensive ones? How many offensive boards did Utah get? To be fair, Yao shares the responsibility, but how many total boards did Battier get? That's just not cutting it.
Firstly, let's agree that Battier's "ineptitude" on the defensive glass should be evaluated on the basis of how it led to offensive rebounds for Utah. Trivially, if Utah grabbed zero offensive rebounds while Battier was in the game, then it wouldn't make any sense to blame him for only getting one defensive boards. Right? Now, wouldn't it make sense to review those instances where the Jazz got an offensive rebound while Battier was on the court and then determine the extent to which that was Battier's fault? That's what I did in another thread (Rockets Defensive Stats). I didn't find any instance where Battier was responsible for giving up an offensive rebound. I did miss a couple offensive boards by the Jazz, so maybe it happened there. But in 9 of the 11, it didn't appear to me that Battier was in any way responsible for them. If you can point to specific instances where Battier's lack of defensive rebounding led to an offensive rebound, that would help. I couldn't find any.
http://www.82games.com/0607/06HOU5D.HTM It's pretty easy to see that in the first game. Rockets were good with Battier on the court, and they sucked with him off the court. I suspect this trend will continue as the season wears on. It has happened for years in Memphis. And given that the bottom line is winning games, Battier is exactly the guy you want in the trenches.
Shane now has 3 rebounds in 66 minutes of play. Battier is a very good SF, frnakly, I don't think he's the answer at PF, that is just some fantasy fan boy wet dream. We need to look at PG Rafer SG T-Mac SF Battier PF ??? C Yao I think it should be PF by commitee which YES means Howard should also see some PT (regardless of what some people think) until Novak is ready or until the team gets someone else. Hayes is a nice player to have don't get me wrong, but the idea that he is anything more than a 15-20 minute player at this point is also another fantasy fan boy wet dream. With Battier we have gotten infinitely better in perimeter D and shooting, however the PF situation has not been solved by him other than his being able to matchup against the other types of PF's that play on the perimeter. But mainly he simply is far too poor of a rebounder and post defender against real 4's to be a PF, he's not, he's a SF.
Boozer looks amazing right now. That contract of his doesnt look so bad now, but ill wait 20 games before i say his hair follicles are okay.
I love Battier, he's a decent one-on-one defender, but an awesome team defender. Battier is a type of player that will win you an extra 5 games because of all the little things such as charges, help defense, interrupting the flow of the opponents offense.... And anyways, Boozer is looking pretty amazing in all three games played this season not just against Houston, he is currently leading the league in rebounding so it wasn't quite an anomaly that Boozer had a good game. Stuart
