Battier Story

Here's an interesting read about Shane Battier.

A part of me wants to believe this story: what could be better? Numbers. Battier. A Grand Theory of Everything.

But as much as I love Battier and Bill James is fun, I can't buy it. This is an article written by a geek and targeted at geeks, having found Battier and Morey willing to endorse this particular theory of geekness. Every slow uncoordinated math major wants to believe that the game is amenable to statistical analysis. But this goes overboard. Sure, you want to force Kobe to shoot a 12-footer instead of a 6-footer. But I don't believe you need extensive analysis to decide this.

I don't believe Battier is a better defensive or team player than Dennis Rodman, whom no one ever accused of being a numerical savant I think both players understand at a gut level the fundamentals of good defense and team basketball, and whether you choose to explain the intuition based on probability theory or untreated mania is up to you. OTOH, I don't know Rodman, so if he spends his evenings poring over stats, I'll rethink my position.

Also .. from the article: "The open corner 3-point shot is the most efficient shot in the game". Let's assume an open layup gives an expected value 2 points. For the 3 point shot to be better, they have to hit more than 66%. I don't believe that, so I call bullshit on this.