What type of activity? He doesn't do anything but run the offense, because that's all he can do. He's not a guy who'll take his man one on one when he receives the ball. You're seeing him more active now, because with Yao in the game his primarily responsibilities are (1) spacing the floor, and (2) getting Yao the ball. With Yao out, there's going to be more player movement and more off the ball action to get shots. The tempo has increased as well, which means there's more motion in the early offense sets. The offense is just different, and so Battier looks more "active". But he's still the same player he's always been. My first round playoff predictions were consistently awful, actually. I predicted Hornets beating Denver, San Antonio beating Dallas, Miami beating Atlanta, and Portland beating Houston. The only ones I got right were the heavy favorites -- LAL, BOS, CLE, and ORL. And, yeah, I pointed out how cruddy my predictions were at least a couple times over in NBA Dish. Not sure what the relevance of series predictions are to this thread, however. IMO, predicting who'll win a playoff series is largely guesswork. Just too many unknowns involved that can shift a series. Especially in a 4/5 matchup, anyone who says they can predict the outcome with a high degree of precision is lying. Understanding the importance of a given player's role is more interesting to me, and that's more the topic of this thread.
That was name calling? Forgive me, I thought you would see it objectively like I did. You forgot to answer my previous question, but if you're dodging I will understand.
Kwame and leebigez, just man up and admit that you have been completely wrong with your Battier hate all along so that everyone can move on.
I guess you never saw shane play in memphis right? There is a difference between passing the ball and passing up a shot. Coaches will tell you its just as selfish to pass up a open shot with the clock running down as it is to jack up a crazy shot early in the shot clock. I want you to follow me on this one so we can understand each other. Battier is part of a strongside triangle on the right side along with yao and brooks. Shane makes the entry pass and after the combat down low, yao passes back to him. Shane passes it back and yao reads the double and kicks it back to shane, but the clock is running down. Shane doesnt even look at the goal while his man is closing out of control and passes to brooks who now has to put up a shot under duress. Now many will say he was being unselfish or many who dont know basketball probably wont even see it, but if u watch and understand basketball, you're always suppose to make yourself a threat. By not looking at the goal nor ball faking, you have just cheated the guy you passed the ball to. Why do i say cheat? Because the defens is in scramble mode already, but when the passer is non treatning, the defense doesnt even have to react to him , thus losing out on the secondary guy faster.If i really wanted to, i could show you alot of times when shane cheats his teammates by not posing a threat to the goal. If i do it, guys like yourself will b**** and moan and probably call me names, but that doesnt bother me. Some people like i said before think looking at the goal is a ball stopper. A player should always stop the ball to read the defense and pose a threat to the defense. Why do you think they teach triple threat position? Its to threaten the defender and read the play. I could go on and on, but some people will never get it.
Shane's impact on the team is underrated and I do disagree with Kwame and Lee at times, but not everything that is said about him is incorrect either.
Obviously, not everything they say about Battier is wrong. In fact, a lot of the weaknesses they point out about Shane are public info, old news. The wrongness of these people is not that they see Battier's limitations, but that they think because of these limitations, Battier is not very valuable for the team.
I do agree with you on that point,on the other hand quite a few guys can't see anything wrong with Battier when he has a bad game. I know it's wrong to single him out when Scola and Landry for instance are unable to defend or score or when Ron/Brooks/Von go haywire.There will always be limitations to what a role player can do, but they all have to step up on the road. That doesn't mean I'm asking anyone to perform miracles by any means.
I'm a harsh critic of shane because i watched shane in memphis and i know he's a better offensive player than he shows. When the trade went down, i wasnt that pissed about it eventhough i wanted brewer. I didnt like the fact we also gave up swift also after 1 yr, but ok, i get it. Then when he got here, its like he kind turned into a specialist vs just being a basketball player. He went from a guy that scoreed getting to the rim(200 vs 100) and scoring other ways (66% of shots are from 3pt range vs 20% in memphis) and it continually to go down. Now he's just in the corner, waiting. In game one vs portland in the 3rd qtm he had a couple of huge plays that were huge because he made them , but they were really plays shane of memphis would have made in his sleep. portland overplayed him so much he put the ball on the floor and got a layup one time and a foul another time. It doesnt seem big, but those plays are expceted from him to me. His unwillingness to engage in the game always puzzles me.
See, this is exactly why people like you continually fail to appreciate Battier, and you can't for the life of you figure out why coaches rave about him, general managers rave about him, fans of other teams covet him and as far as you're concerned, he's just a defense-playing stiff. We've pointed this out ad nauseum, but I guess people still don't understand: The Rockets are consistently a better offensive team when Shane Battier is on the floor. Consistently. They score much more efficiently. That doesn't happen with players who are "unwilling to engage in the game." To you, if he's not shooting the ball, he's not contributing to offense, and you couldn't possibly get shallower than that. If all you ever do is focus on the guy shooting the ball and tickling the twine (and the other guy who pounds the ball into the ground, or both), you'll never, ever, figure out why Shane is actually invaluable to the Rockets offense. The box score really, really sucks for evaluating players. There's a reason why Zach Randolph never stars on winning teams and Shane Battier always does. You'll never find that reason in the box score. But people continue to read the box score like it's the holy grail that guides them into eternal truth. Why?
\ When did this happen? What game? got video? I distinctly remember Battier making a couple of later 3 pointers in a game vs. Blazers. Wasn't it Game 4 in that series? Was he not being aggressive in that game?
shane is the best perimeter defender in the nba. he just needs to knock down his 3's and we can win gm 7!!! shane u better be practicing those 3's right now.
@Carl Herrera: I'll ask you this question here since you avoided it in the thread you started - Can you tell me why Kobe has done better against the Rockets after Shane arrived here than he did before the Battier era began? @JeopardE: Are you using sortable NBA player on court/off court stats in your analysis like these: http://www.82games.com/0809/ONSORT6.HTM ? If so, I'm not sure how those stats really help us in evaluating anything when they say that OKC performs better offensively when Collison is on the floor than Durant or that San Antonio is a better offensive team with Bonner on the floor as opposed to Parker Also, nobody is advocating looking solely at the box score. Watching the games is an effective tool in analyzing a player's performance. I prefer to do that as opposed to relying on obscure statistics that don't tell the full story. Even the so-called adjusted +/- numbers are nothing more than an estimate, which is why a margin of error is tacked on as well. It looks like you answered your own question, but let me add a few things. When the team is fully healthy, there is nothing preventing Battier from doing more than just standing in the corner while his man either exerts no energy on defense, sits in Yao's lap, or just wreaks havoc in general. Unless you believe like RV6 does (which it seems you might) that Adelman tells Battier to go stand in the corner. The worst is when he passes the ball to Yao and his man collapses on him (Yao) in the post and Battier just stands there. He doesn't cut to the basket, which would force the defender to either follow Battier or commit to Yao. This would potentially lead to a wide open layup for Battier or a one on one for Yao. Shane constantly and unnecessarily makes life difficult for Yao in this regards. I'm not sure why this happens since he supposedly has such a high bball iq. He's looking to be more aggressive offensively since Yao has gone down. You might attribute it to a more uptempo offense, but again, there is nothing preventing Battier from doing this when everybody is healthy. He just doesn't look for his shot as much as he should (even when he's open sometimes) when the Rockets are at full strength. Many times since he's been here, his hesitancy to shoot has become so extreme that he doesn't even look at the basket. Take Game 3 for example, Battier played 42 mins with only 6 shot attempts. By his own admission, he's been left open this series, but during that game Kobe was wreaking havoc on D with 2 blocks, 3 steals, and a general disruption of the Rockets' offense. Fast forward to game 4, while Kobe continue to leave Battier open and earned himself 4 steals, Shane made him pay for leaving him wide open by hitting 6-12 shots from the field. While you might say the difference is that Yao was playing in one game and not the other, whats to stop him from doing that and looking to provide tangible offensive contributions when the team is completely healthy? His reluctance to be more a part of the offense contributes to his man not even acknowledging Battier as a scoring threat. Nobody is asking for Battier to take-over the game on offense, but at least do enough to keep your man honest, which makes life easier for everyone else. At times this post season, he has done that and, it seems to me, that more than usual he's looking to be less reluctant to at least attempt to make his man pay for disregarding him. He should not ever allow himself to be Chuck Hayes on the offensive end. Also, I've seen this type of activity from other players in the "old" offense, but never from Battier. Despite his poor handles, I've even seen him take it to the rack on a few occasions and be successful in scoring this post-season. So I believe my theory of Battier getting complacent and being content with a self-imposed diminished offensive role in general and hanging out in the corner in particular when everybody is healthy to be accurate. Again, due to the mpg he plays, the Rockets need him to score and provide tangible production whether the team is healthy or not. This has to happen for the Rockets to be successful and I think what has happened this post season has proven that this is correct.
How much do you think that's on Battier, and how much is it him being on a different team, with different responsibilities, and a different game plan from the coaches? All I ever hear from the coaches when they talk about him is he does exactly what they expect from him. Maybe he doesn't go off script enough and create scoring opportunities -- you need some players like that, I understand that -- but it's nice to have players that just run the offense and can be counted on to do what the coaches want. Again, I know you say differently and you think secretly Adelman really doesn't like Battier, but I can only go by what he says in public and the decisions he makes on the sidelines. If Battier was merely doing a passable job on Kobe, and he's been a dud on the road, why does Adelman keep him on the floor for so many minutes, and particularly in crunch time? Why does Adelman always give him so much credit after the games, when he actually is kind of annoyed that he doesn't have a better player to use there? It doesn't add up for me.
^^exactly. different teams/situations, different responsibilities. i mean ab just scored what, 28pts in game 6? and shane outscored kobe in game 4? where were they when yao was playing? why can't they do this every game?
I have been right also! Team is dumb. Yao is soft. T-Mac is worse. And we are the Baltimore Ravens of the NBA this year. Tough as nails on defense. Make the occasional big play. Minimize mistakes. Hopefully ride it to the end. The minute we try to outscore ANY team, put an L down. One last note.... The minute Battier is off this team, we can consider that whatever run we are going to go on in the coming years is over. You can't find 3 guys in the league like Battier. I hated him at Duke with a passion. But man, I love this guys tenacity, humility, dedication and gangster beast defense. Players like these ride on championship teams. If we are going to be one, you keep people like Battier. He is our new Mario Elie.
