Pau Gasol y Shane Battier (2002), originally uploaded by Vedia.
Last offseason, I had Shane Battier ranked as 32nd most awesomest player in the league. I'm much smarter this year. Qualifying statements: 32 ain't nothing to sniff at; a 6 spot jump isn't exactly monumental; and...Shane Battier cannot be your star. Period. Or maybe all that is, as the kind would say it, bunk. Look, for all our refutations and wild gesticulations over the minutes and hours and weeks and months that make up a year, we're generally a bit smarter with the passing of time, when all is said and done. That said, and hopefully done, Michael Lewis' mammoth of a piece for the NY Times The No-Stats All-Star was one of the things that helped move us in that direction basketball-wise last season/this year.
Haven't read it? That's what links are for. The important knowledge goes: Lewis is the author of several books including The New New Thing about Silicon Valley and the game changer Moneyball about the way baseball teams are funded; The No-Stats All-Star is, of course, about Shane Battier and his contributions ahem! outside the boxscore; the article dropped in the midst of the February furor that always transpires around the NBA trade deadline; it targeted Kobe as Battier's ahem! ahem! hapless victim; and his Mamba-ness as not pleased, quietly.
All that is the soap opera stuff that often surrounds real games being played, which we're not quite ready to focus on yet. Two baker's dozens left, y'all. And, let me just join the ranks of those in the blogosphere expressing enthusiasm and boy-child anticipatory energy for the season to c'mon! c'mon! start already. What we care about for now is how it made us look at Battier differently, all of course as a lens for looking at the game differently, looking at how we look at the game differently, i.e. hello advanced stats.
Battier's long made his reputation as a defensive hound, but he's no immovable object as are the guy's who generally win the DPoY award. Neither does Battier hail from the same dojo of defensive prowess as Bruce Bowen or newly-former team mate Artest. Artest is a bulldog, but let's not linger too Luc Longley on the idea of Ron Ron and dogs. Too unsavory. Bowen, on the other hand, has been considered by many a dirty player. I don't necessarily subscribe to that thought-discipline. To me, Bowen is like a rock in a river. He's always there, where the stream of play seems to take you, and he's frustratingly planted in that spot you're supposed to move through long before you. Chris Paul is, I think, the next appostle of this kung-fu. Battier, however, cannot be regarded on "the other hand." There are no hands for describing his play. He's like the river itself. He's everywhere at once, swirling about you, tossing you in ways you don't even know. Or, failing that, he's more like a net than a rock. You think you can still float confidently down court/stream towards your goal, but all your flailing and palming violations unpenalized don't get you any nearer to scoring. You're effectively immobilized. Trust me. I skimmed the Lewis article. And I played for the Grizz in those Battier-Gasol post-season bound "golden" years.
These are actually the guys Ben's hanging out with right now
Okay, facetiousness reigns the day, but someone had to segue to talking about Battier's sucess as part of near-contending teams. Is the jump from 32 to 26 significant? As I discussed a few days back, the top 30 players in the league seems like it should signify the top 30 guys you want leading a team. Not exactly so. I think that conclusion is pretty obvious, but let's think about it. The ideal league business-wise (I think...I'm an English major for crying out loud, though. What do I know about business?) would be composed of probably 6-8 contenders and probably 6-8 bottom feeders who are rebuilding (though generally they just suck). This leaves a solid 16-ish teams vying for 8-10 playoff spots not occupied by the set-in-stone perennials. Decent competition across the board, in terms of standings. So, when talking about the top 30 guys in the league, how might they be distributed? Well, with exceptions, the worst teams in the league barely have one such athlete. The best teams in the league generally have at least two. Thus, when we get to the top 15-ish players on this list, we're looking at the top top-dogs. In other words, shelf this thought for 11 more days.Back to Battier. Is he the top guy on a top team? Probably not. But one of the nicely salient points Lewis makes about Battier which doesn't involve delving deeply into advanced stats (sometimes being smarter doesn't mean being more willing and able to put in the brain power) is the results his presence has on the win column for his teams. It took him awhile to impact the Grizz, but by his third season they were doing what no other Grizz ensemble has done before or since: make the playoffs. They didn't win any games, but still it was the best 3 years in team history. In 2006, Battier was sent to Houston for Stromile Swift and the draft pick that would be Rudy Gay. That season, the Grizz went from 49 and 33 with the No-Stat All-Star to 22 and 60. The Rockets returned to 50 win form in 06-07 when they picked up Battier. Sure they'd suffered injuries to both Yao Ming and T-Mac in 05-06, but when has that not been the case? Look at the last three years of basketball in Houston and you'll see Battier is the unifying factor on those 50 plus win teams.
