Time to replace Shane Battier in the starting rotation?

Sorry, but I didn't want to wade through 10 pages of fly-off-the-handle posts.

Unless you're getting a star in return, or at least a better player who also plays very good defense, YOU DO NOT TRADE OR BENCH SHANE BATTIER!!!

Replacing Battier in the starting lineup with Chase Budinger would have two effects:

(1) The Rockets' already horrendous perimeter defense would get even worse. Both Aaron Brooks and Kevin Martin are poor defenders. Battier gives the team a player who can at least slow down the opponent's top wing player.

(2) The Rockets' bench scoring punch would be significantly weakened. After giving up easy buckets to start a game, the Rockets will have a harder time making a second quarter run without Chase (and with Shane) to get back in the game.

This thread is stupid.

 

it's been time to replace battier since last year. he looks terrible on offense and his defense is still above average, but he has certainly slipped. bud needs to get the majority of the playing time.

 

Again, using a one game sample size. I'm not going it into that, because it proves nothing. If it can be shown that Scola has that recurring problem over the season, then okay. I never recall seeing a pattern of that with Scola, and think he is ultimately a very sound team defender.

BTW, he also had 16 rebounds. Five more than any player on the Lakers or Rockets, so you really don't have a leg to stand on.

 

What about all those great cuts by shane tonight? How many times did his man turn his head and lose sight of ball-man principles and shane made him pay. See, you and other think i want shane to turn into an offensive force and thats not truw. What i do expect is for him to use that supposedly high bbiq,run the offense and use basic basketball instincts. Time and time again, he just stands in the corner, never jabs,cuts,or set up his defender to get easy baskets or nothing.

 

its time for shane to retire and go into politics... its bud the gods time now

 

I agree with you on both points. I don't think Buddinger shoud start. We have no better option and are unfortunately stuck with Battier as the starter.

 

Sholdve kept trevor :grin:

I know your point,but teams dont want shane unless he's combined with a couple of young players. The so called phoenix trade never happened because the suns wanted landry more than scola,they also wanted chase, and they wanted to dump barbosa. People are always talking sell high,but shanes value was never higher than after the lakers series and now its like the enron stock. I personally dont think chase should start either with mattin as the other guard.

 

The Rockets never had problems scoring the ball with Shane on the court last night, so I think it is safe to say Shane used his high BBall IQ to run the offense correctly. They scored 110 points last night. Scoring is not not not not the problem.

I'm fine with him standing in the corner, because that is what he is supposed to do. I'm sorry its not what you want him to do. I'm sorry your coaching career didnt work out and Adelman's did. He is the coach, and he is fine with what Shane is doing.

 

So we replace Battier to score 5 more points in the 1st quarter but give up 10 more points in the first quarter. Then sit our starters and rely on a bench of lowry, lee, hayes, miller, and battier to score our way back into the game?

Our 1st team and second team are very balanced at this point. We have scoring and perimeter defense on both. Your proposal is to go all offense on the first team with no defense, then all defense and no offense on the second team. That is very easy to play against, and more importantly very easy to coach against. We would be lottery bound by the all-star break.

 

I thought the Suns wanted Battier. I thought the trade didnt happen because Amare wouldnt take a physical before signing a long term deal. People who understand the game see the value in battier, and the people who get paid to make NBA decisions do as well.

 

I agree with you. I don't think anyone is saying Shane is the mesiah. We are just saying he is the best option for starting small forward when it comes to the current roster.

 

So you think thats part of the offense to stand in the corner? If that what you think, so be it. I've watched adelman coach since his first job at portland and I've never seen that. Its cool, i know where this is going, I will let it do what it do.

 

Actually, it's been fairly consistent during his Rockets career for Battier to have a positive impact on the team's offensive efficiency. So what happened last night was not a fluke.

I don't know why I bother with some people, but I'll try to explain nonthelsess:

Battier doesn't "use" too many possessions (only 10-12% of the Rockets offensive possession were "used" by Battier with a shot, assist, T/O, etc., but he is efficient with the few possessions he uses.

He makes good passes to move the offense along, doesn't turn the ball over, runs the offense without breaking plays. All these are things he does in additon to the 3s he takes, which, for some people, are the only thing they think Battier does on offense.

There is, of course, a possible cost to a lack of usage: Generally, a player's efficiency goes down as he uses more possessions. So, it is possible that the 4 other guys on the floor with Battier would be more efficient if Battier and his 12% usage rate is replaced by, for example, Budinger, who used 20% of the possessions last year.

The extent to which this effect happens or not depend on who the other 4 guys are. Some players have gentler Efficiency/Usage Curves (for example, Kobe) than others (for example, Trevor Ariza)-- that is to say, they don't experience as much of a decline in efficiency when required to take use extra possessions. Pairing a Battier with the former type of players would have a less negative "low usage guy" effect than pairing with with the later type of players.

The question is whether the "low usage guy" effect offsets the things that Battiers does do offensively: typically high efficiency with the few possessions he uses (114/100 possession last year was the lowest he had in a while and even that is well above league average), passing without turning the ball over, running the offense, etc.

With last year's pre-Martin starting group (Brooks, Ariza, Battier, Hayes, Scola), the answer was most likely "yes." Ariza and Hayes both have steep Efficiency/Usage Curves and forcing extra possessions on them was not a good thing (See Ariza's shooting numbers and watch tapes of him trying to "create") and there's only so much Brooks and Scola could do with these extra possession.

This year's groups is different, though-- We still got Brooks and Scola, the two better offensive players from last year's 5, Martin has taken Ariza's place and Yao has taken Chuck's place. The bench, which did better offensively last year than the starters pre-Martin, probably has at least as much offensive punch as they did last season (lost Landry, but added Miller, Lee and Hill (if he plays) and retained Lowry and Bud). More likely than not, Battier's positives on offense will outweigh his "low usage guy effect" and the Rocket offense will score more with him on the floor per possession than it will with him off the floor.

 

Where did I propose that? All I'm saying is I'm not happy with Battier as the starting small forward. The fact that we "have no better options" is irrelevant, and something I believe is worthy of criticizing team management.

 

he makes good passes, makes good decisions, how much money does he make

 

The reasons why chase must start instead of Shane are very simple..

Chase is younger, better shooter, better athlete, improving defense and can finish with a dunk like a few can on this team..
Shane is no longer young, can’t shoot and if the 3’s are not falling for him he’s a Zer0, defense has diminished, cannot finish at the basket and most importantly; KOBE BRYANT still managed to score 27pts on 1 Knee and he didn’t have to play any defense because Shane did not put any kind of pressure on him… or whoever is defending him.. If the rockets are going to lose in the last few seconds of a game, do so but with their best offensive players on the floor when they have 2.4 seconds left on the clock.. buddinger, Martin, Brooks, Scola and his lay ups, and Miller were the best options in those last 2.4 seconds.. by the way, Adelman might want to think about restructuring Yao's minutes and make sure 6 of those 24 are saved for the last 6 of the 4th quarter..

 

So you think Battier was defying Adelman's wishes by standing in the corner when the offense demands that he be elsewhere? And you thing he does that and Adelman still decided to play him during the "crunch time" last night and for all of these 7879 minutes that Battier played from October 30, 2007 until last night?

What a p***y Adelman is for not standing up to such a defiant player. Christ, a real coach like Phil Jackson would have made criticised Battier through the press many times already.

 

About $7 mil. Does it matter? Does Adelman look at a player's salary when deciding who should play?

 

Why? Chase Budinger is a great offensive SF option off the bench.

Morey's obviously been trying to acquire Carmelo Anthony for several weeks.

What, were the Rockets supposed to make a trade to only moderately upgrade the starting SF spot, all while foreclosing their ability to acquire Melo or another star (which may very well involve using Battier's large expiring contract)?

If you are pissed that the team traded Trevor Ariza (who the team was locked into for a lot of money for the next four years) in exchange for Courtney Lee, a large trade exception and more salary cap flexibility after the season, then fine. So be it.

 

So, if thats the case, why is Chase not starting?

Why, when Ariza was traded, did they not promote Chase to starter, who fits so smoothly into the Adelman offense?

They had opportunity, they passed on Chase for Shane. Why?