Quantifying Shane Battier
Of interest to any fan of this blog will be Michael Lewis’ long New York Times Magazine article about Shane Battier, in which Battier becomes a jumping-off point for some discussion of analytic approaches to basketball. One thing about the article that bothered me probably had nothing to do with Lewis, but the piece has been given the headline “The No-Stats All-Star.” The implication being that statistics can’t measure Battier’s important contributions.
On the contrary, as Dave Berri observed in response to a similar claim back in November 2007 if you understand the statistics correctly they say Battier is very good. Stats say that Battier is an efficient scorer with his modest number of shots, and that his net possessions numbers resulting from steals and turnovers are very good. Battier also appears to be, as best as one can tell, an excellent on-the-ball perimeter defender. This last bit really is an aspect of the game that conventional statistics don’t do a good job of capturing, but certain statistical systems—including Wins Produced—indicate that Battier is a valuable player.
At any rate, lots of good stuff in the article, just wanted to highlight that one point.
70 Responses to “Quantifying Shane Battier”
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February 16th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I always wonder why a player’s value can’t be summed up in the win/loss ratio, or in the plus or minus points number that is mentioned in the article. In other words, when Battier is on the court Houston is more likely to win or at least performs +6 points on average better. All the other stats are just back ups to the win/loss column, because isn’t that the ultimate goal?
February 16th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Go to hell Battier! Duke sucks!!!
February 16th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Well that’s sort of the point of the whole article. When the headline says “No-Stats” what it really means is “No-Conventional-Stats”.
I always wonder why a player’s value can’t be summed up in the win/loss ratio, or in the plus or minus points number that is mentioned in the article. In other words, when Battier is on the court Houston is more likely to win or at least performs +6 points on average better. All the other stats are just back ups to the win/loss column, because isn’t that the ultimate goal?
Because that’s heavily dependent on who else is on the court with you. For example, Kendrick Perkins will look like one of the best players in basketball, because when he’s on the court the Celtics do really well. Of course that’s really because he tends to be on the court with KG, Pierce, and Ray Allen.
This can be adjusted for, as Morey suggests in the Lewis article, but it’s not all that straightforward how you can do it well.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Because that’s heavily dependent on who else is on the court with you.
Yeah, I thought the article sort of elided that. Yes, Memphis won 50 with Battier. But also with Gasol and (IIRC) Hubie.
This can be adjusted for, as Morey suggests in the Lewis article, but it’s not all that straightforward how you can do it well.
That, it seems to me, should have been the meat of the story. Absent that, it didn’t see all that interesting. Sort of a “The Gifts God Didn’t Give” story about Battier.
It was interesting to get a better sense of how detailed the useful information can be.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I agreed with the points in that article, but I had to laugh when they compared Battier to Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, and Tracy McGrady, three of the most overrated players in the league.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Morey lets out one whopper, and Lewis doesn’t call him on it:
“Blocked shots they look great, but unless you secure the ball afterward, you haven’t helped your team all that much. Players love the spectacle of a ball being swatted into the fifth row, and it becomes a matter of personal indifference that the other team still gets the ball back.”
This is simply incorrect. The sky has not fallen, gravity still pulls downward, and the blocked shot is still valuable on a number of levels:
1 – a block often takes place near the basket on a shot which is otherwise very high %; the player is clearly better off blocking an 80% shot even if it returns possession to an opponent (with the shot clock waning), where on the average 40% of the time a score will occur.
2 – a guy who’s been blocked remembers that when he goes up again in similar situation, thus potentially lowering his offensive effectiveness
3 – near blocks (which threaten, but do not actually block) can be more significant than actual blocks, because there are more of them. This is the ‘lowers 50% shot to 25% shot’ factor.
4 – block threat causes offenses to constrain where they move the ball, lowering their effectiveness.
5 – if you can block to your guy, fine. if not, you’re better off whacking it out of play where at least it won’t go to a guy who’s in good position for a shot.
There’s an additional factor, and Morey all but admits it. Battier takes advantage of the fact that refs rarely call (or even think about) the rule against ‘face guarding’, which prohibits using the hand to block the eyes, even if no contact is made. Battier does it relentlessly, and makes sure he is ‘only’ face-guarding (not eye-poking), both because that would go from clever to dirty, but also because 1 or 2 eye poke incidents would reveal his technique, and get the refs thinking about face guarding. No criticism intended; many players shade various rules to accomplish their goals; how many of the guys Battier guards are able to relentlessly cradle or palm the ball, for example. But for a fact, Battier routinely uses the hand in front of the fact in a way which violates the face guarding rule.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:37 am
“attier also appears to be, as best as one can tell, an excellent on-the-ball perimeter defender. This last bit really is an aspect of the game that conventional statistics don’t do a good job of capturing, but certain statistical systems—including Wins Produced—indicate that Battier is a valuable player.”
This is absolute bullshit, Matthew.
Berri’s “system” isn’t capturing any of what Battier does as an on-ball defender. It’s only when you get into adjusted +/- that you have any chance whatsoever of quantifying on-ball defense, and Berri isn’t measuring that.
As always, the problem with Berri isn’t his quant system, which is rudimentary, but perfectly reasonable in a rudimentary way.
The problem with Berri is the way he repeatedly mischaracterizes the results of his own methodology in order to get publicity. That’s why the rest of the APBRmetric community thinks Berri is a fraud.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I think the article explains the headline quite well — Battier’s not good in terms of the stats generally focused on by the public. The Berri article you linked does go against the fairly blunt declarations in Lewis’ article that the box score in basketball is worthless and possibly counterproductive and that you can’t understand Battier’s value without next-generation, high-resolution statistics.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Very interesting article, especially seeing how detailed the information they feed to Battier is and how he’s the only one to which they feed so much info. Most hardcore fans know that Battier is a very good player already and advanced stats (like Oliver Win Shares) love him for his mix of great defense, good rebounding, high TS% and low turnovers, but I’ve always wondered if Battier low usage isn’t forcing his teammates to carry more of the offensive workload than they should. Maybe is just luck, but Memphis and Houston became very good defensive teams with just average offenses with Battier.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am
And FWIW, Michael Lewis’ article is pretty damn good.
—–
But what does it say for Matthew that he continually pimps a basketball statistician who the rest of the basketball statistician community considers a fraud?
Is Matthew next going to start advising folks to invest their money with Bernie Madoff?
February 16th, 2009 at 11:49 am
It should be noted, in fact, that Berri had Battier as the 7th best Rocket through 32 games this year and 7th best last year, so this is, in fact, a case where even the most advanced stats don’t tell the story, aside from the assorted adjusted plus-minuses.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:52 am
1: Adjusted plus/minus is a great statistic, but unfortunately it is quite noisy and as a result doesn’t give very helpful results.
Just reading that comment thread in that link reminds me of why I hate Dave Berri so much. He sanctimoniously intones as to how difficult it is to ‘teach’ statistics in a comment thread and how using the residual to improve your predictions in statistics is a huge no-no. Which is actually 100% bullsh*t. I studied statistics in school and I know it is extremely common to use YR1 to help predict YR2. The most famous poll prediction website of this season, 538.com, was doing exactly that, interpreting this year’s polls in light of previous voting results from that region of the country.
You can spend a lot of time talking about whether it is better to look at this as ‘out-of-sample’ predicting or just year to year follow up. But it would be perfectly reasonable to say: I’m going to predict team wins this year using as inputs last year’s results and a few extra player specific variables. That is basically exactly what APBR is doing and what Berri should be trying to do, though he is very bait-and-switch about that. What the APBR people showed is that it is trivially easy to come up with a system that does that task better than Berri’s. Which is actually quite shocking. Berri’s system just doesn’t look like a real effort, trading simplicity for effectiveness. And apparently it is even crappy at just that simple task.
And Berri’s complimenting himself on explaining NBA wins better than scoring in the MLB explains wins… well, of course in a high scoring sport like basketball, scoring efficiency is a better predictor of wins than scoring in baseball.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am
9: One of the guys in that thread was touting Battier’s 42% 3PT shooting as an example of how great an asset he was. That looks very promising, but for a guy scoring as few points/min as Battier, that % is way too high. He’s almost certainly passing up too many open looks.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:57 am
“It should be noted, in fact, that Berri had Battier as the 7th best Rocket through 32 games this year and 7th best last year, so this is, in fact, a case where even the most advanced stats don’t tell the story”
Berri is not employing the most advanced stats. He’s not employing advanced stats at all.
He is employing a rather crude and rudimentary stats system and then massively overselling the results of that system.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“Adjusted plus/minus is a great statistic, but unfortunately it is quite noisy and as a result doesn’t give very helpful results.”
All hoops stats are quite noisy. That’s what makes the whole thing so interesting.
—–
Plus/minus systems are a useful addition to the toolkit. They help quantify some things that otherwise get missed.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
@ drinkof :
6 – Blocking a shot forces a team to reset their offense but with much less time on the shot clock.
That’s hardly fair.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I found that article interesting mostly for the things Lewis couldn’t say. Obviously he wants the story to be about how better statistical analysis has revealed undervalued players and made the Rockets a winner. But as he hints, the Rockets have two massively overpaid superstars on their roster, so unlike in Moneyball, the story can’t be about how the franchise as a whole is very smart. Add to that the fact that the Rockets’ GM refuses to discuss the actual details of his advanced statistical system and you have an article that basically comes off as hand-waving. How do we know that Shane Battier contributes a great deal to his team’s success? Because Michael Lewis watched him and saw him to be a good defender.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I was going to come into this comment thread to trash Berri’s ridiculously over-simplistic “system” but I see several others have beaten me to the punch.
Matt, Berri is a fraud. Look elsewhere for real basketball analysis. Berri has Dennis Rodman as being one of the most valuable players of all time because all he did was rebound and never handled the ball on offense, thus allowing his “possession meter” to be sky high. Everything is based on the assumption that a possession “should” average 1-point and then he uses that assumption to make all his calculations on the “proper use” of a possession, almost completely agnostic of how exactly possessions come to be worth, on average, one point.
And then his complete and total faith in his statistics without any acknowledgment of their shortcomings whatsoever. Even Hollinger recognizes limitations with PER and is constantly trying to make it better. Berri acts as if Wins Produced was given to him from on high and any questioning of or modifications to his precious formula would be sacrilege.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
WIthout reading either article, it is possible the guy means “stats most people read/know about” when he says “stats”. Like stats means ppg and rpg and field goal % and not weird John Hollinger stuff.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Lewis really should have picked another player.
I doubt I am alone in saying I hate Shane Battier and could never read an article praising him, no matter how interesting it might be.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I also wanted to say: the Pistons should be an interesting case study this year. They basically traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson straight up and didn’t change anything else (yet) and they are behind last season’s win total by double digits.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Guy:
I read the article and your impression is the one I got, too.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
“How do we know that Shane Battier contributes a great deal to his team’s success? Because Michael Lewis watched him and saw him to be a good defender.”
The article was basically about telling the story of APBRmetrics through Shane Battier in much the same way that the Christians tell the story of god through Jesus.
Such narrative strategies gain in vividness for newcomers, even if they lose some depth and detail about the topic at hand.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“I doubt I am alone in saying I hate Shane Battier and could never read an article praising him, no matter how interesting it might be.”
I dig Battier, just as I dig Bruce Bowen.
Effective perimeter defenders who can knock down the 3pt shot really are pretty valuable.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Notorious P.A.T. — I love Billups, and I am happy to see the Nuggets prosper while the Pistons falter, but you cannot forget that the trade also saw the Pistons lose McDyess for several weeks. He was last year & is again this year I believe their leading rebounder and a really significant part of their team.
That said, he’s been back for a while now, and the Pistons still are not playing all that well. But it wasn’t simply a straight Billups-for-AI deal. The Pistons also had to go without McDyess for several weeks.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
“That’s hardly fair.”
Well… Madoff lost huge amounts of other people’s money while Berri just misleads people about hoops stats. So the substance is obviously different.
But both Madoff and Berri are considered to operate fraudulently by their peers, so that’s the reason the comparison has some actual fairness to it.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
“the Pistons should be an interesting case study this year”
They are, but for different reasons than you think, Notorious P.A.T.
Detroit essentially has the same problems Phoenix has: a difficult roster to mesh together, along with inept coaching due to inexperience.
Shane Battier is able to be a valuable player for the Rockets because he has a well-defined role that is tailored to his skills. On the other hand, roles on Detroit and Phoenix are a mess, which makes almost every player on those teams look worse than they actually are.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
“But as he hints, the Rockets have two massively overpaid superstars on their roster, so unlike in Moneyball, the story can’t be about how the franchise as a whole is very smart.”
Yao is underpaid, not overpaid.
And if you look at the entire Rockets roster, the only bad contract they have is McGrady. And I’m not sure how anyone could have predicted he’d enter old age at 25yo…
February 16th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
This is all excellent news…..for Brandon Roy
February 16th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
15: You are of course correct. What I meant was that adjusted plus/minus is too noisy to be the only stat we use. I think if there was enough data (and therefore, better SNR), adjusted plus/minus would be the single most valuable metric for evaluating players, capturing just about everything in their value aside from some obscure things like player dependent coaching effects.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Yao is underpaid, not overpaid.
If you consider only the games he actually plays, I guess. Maybe “massively” is a stretch, but he is only in 2/3 of the season.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
spike, i’m not here to defend dave berri, but dennis rodman IS one of the most valuable players of all time: he was a superior defender against players of all sizes, he was a terrific rebounder, he understood where he was supposed to be on the offensive end: it’s not an accident that he was a key contributor to a number of championships.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Boy, stat threads sure do get contentious.
Am I misremembering, or did the 50-win Grizzlies continue to suck after they got Gasol back from his injury — their only difference being that they had the apparently superior Rudy Gay instead of Battier?
One thing a lot of these discussions seem to ignore is the fact that in basketball, you HAVE to shoot every 24 seconds, whether it’s efficient to or not. When you take away a few seconds for getting the ball upcourt and a few seconds for trying to avoid shot-clock-running-down panic,you basically have 15 seconds to create a shot. A team needs guys who’ll try to create something even when it’s not there. Granted, you’d rather have that person be Lebron or DWade rather than Stephen Jackson, but you’d sure as hell rather it be Stephen Jackson than an “efficient” player like Brandan Wright or Andris Biedrins.
Also, I’m pretty sure that Matthew’s trust fund is responsible for his membership in the Berri conspiracy.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Also, if Houston has figured out a way to take the noise out of +/-, they should be running the fucking economy.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
“spike, i’m not here to defend dave berri, but dennis rodman IS one of the most valuable players of all time: he was a superior defender against players of all sizes, he was a terrific rebounder, he understood where he was supposed to be on the offensive end: it’s not an accident that he was a key contributor to a number of championships.”
No doubt.
Rodman was indeed highly valuable. Berri’s headline grabbing contention, however, was that Rodman was clearly more valuable than Jordan…
February 16th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
“One thing a lot of these discussions seem to ignore is the fact that in basketball, you HAVE to shoot every 24 seconds, whether it’s efficient to or not. When you take away a few seconds for getting the ball upcourt and a few seconds for trying to avoid shot-clock-running-down panic,you basically have 15 seconds to create a shot. A team needs guys who’ll try to create something even when it’s not there. Granted, you’d rather have that person be Lebron or DWade rather than Stephen Jackson, but you’d sure as hell rather it be Stephen Jackson than an “efficient” player like Brandan Wright or Andris Biedrins.”
Word.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
petey, i see: truth is, i don’t keep up with dave berri, period, so i didn’t realize that his claim was that outlandish rather than a more defensible one about rodman’s value (if you care about winning).
February 16th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Rodman was valuable, especially as a low-post defender. Of course, Berri’s system doesn’t even pretend to measure something like that.
And all those possessions Rodman created by grabbing rebounds wouldn’t have been very valuable if he was the one charged with converting them into points. That’s the point. Berri’s system overvalues low-utilization high-rebounding players so grossly it’s almost comical, and yet he acts as if his system is perfect.
At least Hollinger recognizes that PER overvalues high-usage players like Iverson and takes that into account when evaluating players. Berri write analysis like “using Win Score, Dennis Rodman gained a higher score than Michael Jordan, therefore Dennis Rodman was more instrumental to the Bulls’ success than Jordan was. QED.”
February 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
37: No the awesome thing about Berri is that he not only makes claims like these, but he states them in a way that indicates that he believes them as revealed truth. A crazy result like Rodman > Jordan does not call into question Berri’s model. It calls Jordan into question.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
One other unrelated stat note. What’s the current scholarship on devaluing baskets that came off assists relative to baskets that did not come off assists? It seems like if someone like Rodman made 80% of made baskets off assits, that should devalue his offensive contributions versus someone like Jordan, for whom probably less than 25% of his baskets came off assists.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
It’s kinda funny…but the stats, complex as they are, just back up the observations. I think a lot of casual basketball fans would say “Battier sucks!”. But the more serious basketball watchers know that Battier, like him or not, is a good defender, good at taking charges, an overall valuable glue guy. But the real question is, why haven’t the Rockets dumped McGrady, or at least molded him into a rich man’s Robert Horry, just taking triples and fouling the other team’s point guard too hard?
Anyway, I thought there was some interesting cultural stuff going on when Battier talks about the Street rejecting him…but it kinda gets dropped in the end, not followed up on in favor of the no-stats love-fest. I’ve grown to appreciate Battier, but I did for a long time resent him as the white sports media’s dream of a “perfect Negro”, a basketball Booker T. I mean, very middle-class, Duke-playing, light-skinned, hustling for loose balls, Dick Vitale-beloved, never-arrested, all-American dude. In short, he plays basketball “the right way”, and that comes with a lot of baggage, a lot of it unfair to Battier when all he was doing was playing ball the way he knew how. I mean, Coach K is great at winning games, but I don’t think he taught Battier anything that Battier didn’t already know. And that’s the cultural battle right there, which is like “Battier was molded by his (white, male, old, old-school, insert hegemonic system here) coaches” versus “Battier plays his own game, it just happens to help his team.” What I get from this article is that he isn’t necessarily trying to play “the right way”, but he’s playing his own game, and searching for his own sort of liberation from those old battles.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
In the Lewis article, when Daryl Morey says that players focus on the stat they’re being paid for, possibly to the team’s harm? I thought of Dennis Rodman. I can’t study the stats right now, and I do think Rodman was a hell of a valuable player, but I suspect that in some seasons he was so focused on rebounds that he ignored other contributions he could have made — such as guarding his man away from the basket.
About points scored off an assist vs. unassisted, I think moving without the ball is an undervalued skill. I can’t fathom that you should systematically and always give more credit for points scored in isolation… For sure, though, every NBA team needs guys who can create their own shot b/c 24 seconds isn’t always enough time to run a halfcourt offense.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Yeah, I agree making an assisted shot is valuable. But if you don’t value them differently, you’re basically conceding that assists have no intrinsic value. 2 points are scored either way. If you give full credit to the player scoring the basket and additional credit for the assister, than those 2 points are somehow more valuable than 2 unassisted points, which doesn’t make sense. I’ve been meaning to post about this on the APBRMetrics forum but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
What Big Sneezy said.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
“Anyway, I thought there was some interesting cultural stuff going on when Battier talks about the Street rejecting him”
Of course, the most interesting cultural stuff in the association this year is Iverson cutting the cornrows.
Shaq’s tweet is pretty funny.
February 16th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Petey:
“I dig Battier, just as I dig Bruce Bowen.
Effective perimeter defenders who can knock down the 3pt shot really are pretty valuable.”
This is hilarious, I was just thinking Battier was basically Bowen 2.0.
Big Sneezy, you make some good points. But I can’t agree with this one. “I mean, Coach K is great at winning games, but I don’t think he taught Battier anything that Battier didn’t already know.”
As the article notes, “He blocked the ball when Bryant was taking it from his waist to his chin, for instance, rather than when it was far higher and Bryant was in the act of shooting.” That’s absolutely classic Duke, and the ability of even average Duke players to perform that ’strip before the shot goes up’ (and, in fact, ball strips of all types) at an advanced level indicates it is deeply ingrained and practiced to a faretheewell.
Actually, there’s lots that K either taught him, or drilled him to higher levels. Where do you think Battier got THAT good at flopping (taking the charge)?
February 16th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I thought the article was a pretty miserable attempt on Lewis’s part to extend his Moneyball franchise to basketball.
February 16th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
“I was just thinking Battier was basically Bowen 2.0.”
One of my biggest frustrations with the Pistons this year has been the unwillingness of the coach to play Arron Afflalo alongside Iverson.
Afflalo is an above average perimeter defender with nice touch on his shot. He doesn’t really have an offensive game, but Iverson provides enough excess shot creation to allow Afflalo to jump camp out in the corner for the high percentage 3pt shot and not be a drag on the offensive end.
In short, Affalo could be Bruce Bowen 3.0.
Even the stats confirm what I see. But the coach doesn’t see it that way at all…
February 16th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
One thin that bothered me was the assertion that it is selfish of the point guard to pick up an assist when they have a breakaway because making the pass lowers the chance of a bucket.
While this is true I’d imagine it lowers the chance of a basket by a rather small amount. You have to figure in the positives of the assist, potentially rewarding a player who made a defensive play to start the break, getting a dunk that fires up the team and the crowd, etc. I’m sure you could run numbers on these events and I would expect it would turn out to be worth the pass.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
It’s striking how writers like Michael Lewis and Bill James can make a lot of money writing in a highly quantitative fashion about sports, but there’s little market for highly quantitative analysis of social issues. I was just going through the 1970s-1990s “Keeping Up” columns in Fortune of the late Daniel Seligman, who was doing for social policy rather what Bill James was doing for baseball, but where’s the market for quantitative punditry these days?
February 16th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Worthwhile FD meditation on Battier…
February 16th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
One interesting aspect of Lewis’s article is its emphasis on intelligence as an asset in basketball. Battier had a 3.96 GPA at suburban Detroit’s most expensive prep school, and graduated from Duke.
If you think about the all-time great centers, you’ll find a fair amount of evidence that they were pretty bright. David Robinson scored 1300 on the SAT, back when that was the equivalent of about 1400 today. Bill Walton attended Stanford law school for awhile. Abdul-Jabbar scored, I believe, 1130 on the SAT (old-style). Chamberlain and Russell certainly appeared to be bright individuals. That’s rather unusual at a position where the first requirement is being enormously tall.
On the other hand, I can’t think of much evidence that Michael Jordan was particularly smart in the sense measured by SATs or IQ tests, but he was the smartest on-court player I’ve ever seen.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
On the other hand, I can’t think of much evidence that Michael Jordan was particularly smart in the sense measured by SATs or IQ tests, but he was the smartest on-court player I’ve ever seen.
Also, I can think of all kinds of smart off-court athletes who do really stupid things on the court. At the amazing speed this type of game is played, on-court intelligence seems to be a very unique mental capacity. It doesn’t seem to me that just any NBA player of Battier’s IQ can be as in-game smart.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
One of my biggest frustrations with the Pistons this year has been the unwillingness of the coach to play Arron Afflalo alongside Iverson.
Your biggest frustration should be that Iverson’s even on the roster, sucking the life out of that team.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
“If you think about the all-time great centers, you’ll find a fair amount of evidence that they were pretty bright. David Robinson scored 1300 on the SAT, back when that was the equivalent of about 1400 today. Bill Walton attended Stanford law school for awhile. Abdul-Jabbar scored, I believe, 1130 on the SAT (old-style). Chamberlain and Russell certainly appeared to be bright individuals.”
Wait a minute — I thought you were supposed to be a racist white supremacist. What’s with you saying that these black guys are smart?
February 17th, 2009 at 1:03 am
How to tell if an article is great — its asides will be fascinating, whether or not you agree with the premise.
Example: the mention that Jerry West was desperate to trade to Battier, even though he seemed to be one of his team’s more effective players.
Lewis didn’t follow up (probably West didn’t want to talk about it) but it sure does raise some interesting questions…
February 17th, 2009 at 1:16 am
All-Pro Cleveland Browns’ quarterback Frank Ryan, who earned a Ph.D. in math from Rice, was considered by his coaches and teammates to be not a very sharp pencil on the football field. He didn’t become a success in the NFL until his coach simplified the playbook for him. But, everybody admired his bravery — he held onto the ball as the pocket collapsed around him until the very last fraction of a second.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:29 am
I don’t know about that – I always thought that Michael Lewis’s bread and butter was writing quantitatively about business, finance, and the stock market. And besides, Freakonomics seems to have done well at finding an audience.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Battier needs to poke people in the eyes and go for the knees more if he is going to replace Bowen. Perimeter defenders are a great assest, but I was one of a few guys who could give Jordan problems and I spent my playing days in Italy
February 17th, 2009 at 10:03 am
“I don’t know about that – I always thought that Michael Lewis’s bread and butter was writing quantitatively about business, finance, and the stock market.”
Not really. He doesn’t get that quantitative in his financial articles, and often tap dances right around the complex financial instrument his tale centers on without diving in an explaining it (or demonstrating that he understands it). See, for example, his mention of synthetic CDOs in “The End of Wall Street”.
February 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Why would Berri be a fraud? Because he actually is taking an accurate, simplistic approach to using the box score to explain team wins?
Berri never claimed to have the answers. All he has a very accurate system based entirely off the box score.
People take his findings out of context and create straw man’s arguments like the 10 people in here who mentioned that Berri said Rodman was better than Jordan.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
The scary thing is that Oklahoma City is better situated than Portland…
OKC has all that talent, and they’ve got scads of good picks yet to come.
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