or logo said he had a deal in place. did SEA confirm? that is what makes poker so much fun. who blinks first? so we get to 10 and there is a deal. then we only have how many months to find someone else willing to trade? and we get to 10 and there isn't a deal in place? then you ask: "Jerry do you know how to squeal like a pig?" Battier is good but he is not great. His PER is not that great. And as we have seen in countless discussions here he is an interchangeable part of a team being built like a uni-wall - is he a 2? is he a 3? is he a 4? no-one can say for sure.....and he has deficiencies at all three of those positions. sure seemed like Portland and Memphis had walkie talkies between their two offices and were working someone over....
I completely agree. I think people are grossly exaggerating Stro's inabilities simply because we had delusions of grandeur when he signed. It's absolutely hilarious how this board exaggerates in its writing of revisionist history. Because of one supposed "wave off", "Mike James was a ball hog his entire stint with us, Rafer Alston was terrible with us, Stro was absolutely worthless, and Steve Francis is the most selfish player in the league." Stro wasn't bad at all. Was he a bust? Absolutely, as we all expected he would flourish in the starting role. However, he was an effective backup big man and was on a friendly contract. Suddenly, this new "moneyball" bullsh*t defines that he is worthless and is wasting a roster spot. What ever happened to simply watching the game with your own eyes? If Howard isn't dealt this offseason, and it becomes clear Stro was shipped due to some personal disgust from Van Gundy, I will be irate.
shane battier is a younger bruce bowen. spurs fans will tell you how invaluable bowen has been to their championship teams. in fact, the more i think about it, i'm not sure they would have traded bowen for a gay-type player, simply because the spurs would not have needed him. they already had their duncan and parker and ginobili. in much the same light, we already have our yao and james (hopefully) and tmac. the question to answer is: could rudy gay have been our bruce bowen...at the very least? i think so, at least at the beginning of his career. as he develops (and t-mac inevitably declines) he could have assumed a much larger offensive role with the team. all in all, no matter how much moneyball is touted around here, i say this was still a bad move.
I completely agree with this too. I was absolutely disgusted at the time and I still think it was a terrible move. Why would you just let the guy walk for nothing when you paid such a hefty price? Why not atleast try to save some face and hold onto him. It's amusing that "moneyball" values roster spaces so much, yet we continuously burn assets so we can fill our roster with the likes of Rick Brunson and Ryan Bowen.
Agreed! Good job gentlemen. I've been on vacation away from the internet for a few days on the beach. What a good thread with outstanding contributions from both of you!!!
absolutely. granted, eddie had/has his problems, but he was still an asset to the team with his great rebounding and shotblocking. and, when on, he was able to stretch the defense with 3s. instead of holding on to him or parlaying his "potential" into a different asset, he just cast him aside. bad asset management.
That doesn't seem fair. We just hired Daryl Morey a few months ago. I've seen no talk of "moneyball" prior to his arrival. You're seemingly holding him accountable for moves that took place before he arrived. Perhaps those moves wouldn't have happened if he was with the Rockets then. There is no way of knowing. p.s. While I agree that it was a terrible blow to the franchise to let Eggie walk for nothing (especially after all we gave up to acquire him), let's not forget why it happened. He was missing practices and scheduled meetings with JVG and CD. He had been arrested for apparently assaulting then firing shots at his ex-girlfriend. I think most of us were glad to see a person like that gone from our team. I honestly don't think the Rockets had much of a choice. Let us also not forget that the Nets signed him and they too released him shortly thereafter.
You're right. The subject of my frustration isn't "moneyball" but Van Gundy's ideology of managing. They both are similar in nature, but what I mean is that Van Gundy has a history of letting players walk or negating failures rather than holding onto them as assets, and then filling up the roster with hard working garbage.
m_cable, i was one of the posters that publicly told you how much i was enjoying your posts as well as van gundier's posts. but, respectfully, something like this :: would get a rookie incessantly flamed. sura hasn't played in a year due to injuries, and we heard more about his playboy lifestyle than his yao-like efforts to rehab during the season. if you think that boozer has worn out his welcome in utah enough to where his value is close to 1 injured-and-unlikely-to-ever-play-again playboy + 1 un-driven PF with loose screws, then you can call me Fabio Cannavaro..
Yeah the method seems to be publicly trash a player and then wonder why no one else wants him. Instead of sticking him in the shower, waxing him and then bringing him out in a new suit and saying nice things about him, great team player bla blah blah. BTW DA had a fair/good rating on 82games.com and Gundy did what with him? Yet Rybo and JHo are still around.....
I like GATER's $Ball abbreviation. Put me in the, "thrilled that we got Battier, have many times wished he were on the Rocks, and we should have gotten more, like the 24th pick," crowd. I think we will be able to gauge just what Swift's value is by what West gets for him in trade, because I think they will move him, and I don't believe he'll see a game in the Grizzlies' uniform. Guess we'll find out. Very nice read, guys.
It's very frustrating and makes absolutely no sense when you consider that Van Gundy is an absolute genius when it comes to actual x's and o's. His off court handling is just puzzling to say the least and there's too many examples of it. Both Derek Anderson and Stromile Swift are now gone within a year - what does that do to our reputation among free agents? What is the logic behind giving JHO meaningless minutes above Swift and Hayes in a lost seasaon? If you know Swift is gone, why not atleast try to drive up his trade value or atleast help Hayes develop? Why stick with aging vets like Wesley and Bowen (more worthless rather than aging in his case) in a lost season to get a few pointless wins eventually hurting our lottery chances. He's just too damn short sighted. I still believe he is amazing as far as his on court coaching, but as a manager he is disgustingly short sighted.
Not sure if there was someone else logo had his eyes on or whether he think Gay might drop to 10th. Given the Rockets preference for an immediately useful player rather than a project, is it so inconceivalbe that they'd pick Brewer, Redick, or Foye(if available) instead? Draftexpress said they heard Rockets considered Marcus Williams "the safe pick". Lots of rumors floating around at the time. As for the trade value of Battier, back in offseason 2005, when John Paxson was shopping Eddy Curry around, supposely one of the interested parties was Jerry West, and the negotiation broke down over West's refusal to give Battier up. Now, hate on Curry all you want, but he does have a lot of natural talent and he had value to GMs other than Isiah back then, too. Here's a link to an old discussion about Battier among a group of leading stat heads (Bob Chaikin, John Hollinger, Dan Rosenbaum, etc) and there were some interesting points of view that don't neccesarily agree with each other: http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/APBR_analysis/messages/5694?viscount=-30&l=1 The discussion started with an interesting observation, Bob Chaikin has a NBA simulation software(http://www.bballsports3.com/bball.html), and it seems that putting Shane Battier on a team makes the team win 8 to 10 more games than they would otherwise. The question was how a player who gets so few touches per 48 minutes has such a large impact on the game. In the course of the discussion, Hollinger said something about Battier not being that good due to his mediocre individual PER, however, others cite his efficient use of the few possessions he does get and the consistently positive effects he seems to have on his team as proof that he is an impact player. Here's the discussion on their new website over the recent HOU/MEM trade, for those of you who are interested in this kind of stuff: http://sonicscentral.com/apbrmetrics/viewtopic.php?t=829 In the end, nothing can really be proven until Battier, Stro, and Gay puts on their uniforms and start playing real NBA ball. I can't wait til November! __________________________________________________________ As for Stromile, no he's not a big negative, and I agree, he's a HUGE step up from the likes of Mo Taylor. Probably a better fit at PF than Juwan is, too, due to the fact that Stro has those long arms and the quickness to distrupt a lot more shots than Juwan ever could. Still, though, he has a problem similar to Juwan and Mo-- he doesn't rebound the ball well at all. Not with HOU, and not with Memphis. Yeah, he'd be a better option than these two, but I doubt he'd ever be the ideal option unless he develops a nose for the ball like Marcus Camby. Hell, I don't even think he has much of a chance of being as effective as Chuck Hayes for the Rockets. If I had a choice between keeping Stro or keeping Juwan, I'd keep Stro for sure. My first choice, however, would be to get rid of both of them-- and their contracts (not horrible... but it's money I can probably find a more effective player with) and give the minutes to Chuck, Novak, Battier, and whoever else Rockets could get (maybe Reggie Evans? Jarron Collins?) Yes, that means I'd give Stro up for just a TE (maybe some cash and a 2nd round pick would help). That does NOT mean he's the most worthless player or the worst contract in the world-- he's about average with an about average contract, so it cancels out. In fact, being good enough to be worth a TE would be an achievement for guys like Jerome James. ______________________________________________________ As for the "filling spots with Brunson"... the problem last year was that the guys who were supposed to be there got injured all of a sudden. Yao, McGrady were each out 1/2 year, Sura was gone the whole year, Rafer was out part of the year, Barry retired.. all guys they were counting on playing minutes. When this kind of stuff happens, it's kinda hard to find quality replacements.
Van Gundier: Although I completely disagree, very interesting stuff. I wonder how Yao and McGrady compare to some of the all-time greats. You already pointed out that they are justified in their "superstar" status, but do their moneyball impacts compare to the all-time legends or are they pretenders? As far as Battier winning 8-10 more games, although that seems a highly liberal figure, I don't think his impact on a team can be dismissed. We all saw how big a difference Bobby Sura made with similar stats and intangible contributions. I have no doubt that this team can win 55 games if healthy. My disagreement has been that I feel that is in the playoffs however, where the mold has to be broken, and the unique players are more beneficial. We will see. Another thing that doesn't make any sense to me is the Chuck Hayes situation. Moneyball aside, we all saw it with our own eyes, he was easily our best power forward last year and always made things happen. Why did Gumby constantly trash him in the media and never give him playing time? And why are we to now believe that anything will change this year?
Nor can I. Pretty much why I've stayed out of the discussion for the most part. I like stats but I always question when the stats I look at don't add up to what I'm seeing during the game. Or vice versa. We disagree on Battiers impact primarily because I think the Rockets are a playoff team with either Gay + Swift or Battier. If Battier doesn't gurantee you 2nd round, then you've given Gay a year to diminish the distance and you've operated w/o Swift as a backup C. Something he can do well. Unlike a lot of discussion at CF, this one could actually have emperical resolution. Thanks for bringing it up and using some indepth analysis. I disagree with some conclusions but appreciate the approach.
thacabbage, I guess we'll just have to disagree about Battier for now... the new season will either prove us right or wrong. Personally, I think Battier is quite a bit better than Sura. The Rockets players, statistically, played better with Mike James in the game than they did with Sura. Bob is a decent intangibles guy and I love his rebounding and intensity, but he's not a terribly efficent offensive guy... turns the ball over quite a bit (I felt nervous whenever he was being pressured bringing up the ball), shoots only mediocre %, and (as a converted SG) doesn't have the best court vision. Battier, on the other hand, has some extremely efficient individual numbers and somehow makes a huge impact on team play year after year (baffling even to the stat heads I linked to above)... Also I agree that Van Gundy made a mistake in not using Hayes more. One of the things coaches, including Van Gundy, tend to do is to fall in love with certain players either because they are scrappers (Sura) or smart solid pros (Juwan). This is one reason I'm happy about Morey's hiring. Not that the coaches never read +/- stats before-- I'm sure they do, but Morey can probably highlight the objectively facts like, for example, Mike James was really our best PG back in 04/05 and Chuck Hayes is a much better fit than Juwan... It sounds like Van Gundy is listening, too... so I'm hopeful his rotation will be more rational. (Just to make sure, though... Morey needs to trade Juwan just to remove the temptation).
gater, that's the best point in this thread and the point that needs to be drilled in all thiese $ball heads. the rockets are playoff team with battier, with gay, or with neither imo. battier couldn't only get his team out of the second round, they haven't won a playoff game, one season of fifty wins and one season of forty nine. even steve francis and mobley, and jim jackson, and cato, and a second year yao managed a playoff win. its short sighted, too conservative thinking by the rockets. battier's impact is lessoned in the playoffs, when the players who take games off in the regular season, hustle and play defense in the playoffs. if everyone is hustling and playing defense, what difference does battier make? I would bet, I haven't looked, that his +/- impact goes down in the playoffs. especially when coaches shorten their rotations.
You watched the Rockets last year, right? You don't need this "new 'moneyball' bullsh*t" to know that Stromile Swift was lousy. He was completely lost on offense and defense. I would be personally disgusted if my prize power forward couldn't earn his way on to the court over Chuck Freakin' Hayes and Ryan Bowen! How didn't your own eyes tell you that keeping Swift around for four more years would be pointless? He's closer to Roderick Rhodes than a starting power forward in the NBA.
pgabriel - I looked before my last post but just didn't want to go there at this point in time. Battiers +/- vs DAL was...+3 / -6 / -3 / -13 In fairness, as I looked them over it appeared he was at the top of the heap. But it wasn't a very pretty heap. These are raw and unadjusted for the who was on the floor. Case in point...the -13. He didn't play the final 4 minutes of Q3 nor the entire Q4 of game 4. But DAL ended the final 6 minutes of Q4 with A. Griffin, Powell, Armstrong, Mbenga and Diop. I am nearly certain that these final 6 minutes won't make it to anyones $Ball analysis. I don't have the computing power nor the time to verify but I surely hope people using this methodolgy throw out the "garbage time"! There is already IMO a significant error variable factor present. For example, in the Rosenbaum link provided earlier, Battier was ranked 26th. But his +/- 2.2 error deviation could have dropped him to 61st.
+/- stats over 4 or 12 games doesn't really mean much. There is even more noise than unadjusted stats with garbage time and randomness. That said... Battier's overall on/off court court was +22 according to 82games.com over those 4 games... they were bad with him, and absolutely horrible without him... or so it seems. By the same token, 4 or 12 bad games as evaluated by traditional scouting does mean a whole lot, either. The Grizz were the inferior team in each of those playoffs matchups and neither thier one star (Gasol) or their point guards were generating many opportunities for the rest of the team. Battier gets his personal stats by exploiting easy opporturniteis and I'd imagine playing the better teams eliminates those. Would that mean the same with the Rockets in the playoffs? If TMac, Yao, and Mike James are all on the Rockets at that time, I'd think there would be plenty of easy shots still even in the playoffs. We'll see, though.
