Bill James Basketball and Shane Batier

by chicagogreen on Feb 14, 2009 5:09 PM EST

Here is a really good article about Shane Batier and the Bill James affect on basketball. Why, if Batier's stats are so modest and if his athleticism is subpar does he constantly make dramatic improvements to his team's records? Great intro about NBA phoniness right before tip off where everybody is pretending to actaully know each wother. The Bill James affect is spearheaded by Daryl Morey, the Rockets GM, who, I did not know, worked for the Celtics ownership group as they were buying the team and in the early days of that group.

Here is a juicy bit:

There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group....We had a point guard in Boston who refused to pass the ball to a certain guy.

It is a good long article that might help in this god awful all-star break down time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?em

Be respectful and keep it clean. Thanks.

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ok, so i just finished this article, this is a must read. I have been talking on this site since before Jeff did as all the enormous service of taking the thing over. You gotta trust me, read this article.

by chicagogreen on Feb 14, 2009 5:41 PM EST reply actions

this is driving me batty, there is no where to tell the system to send me email updates on this forum

by chicagogreen on Feb 14, 2009 6:41 PM EST reply actions

great find! this article must be read by everyone.

by Brendan on Feb 14, 2009 10:48 PM EST reply actions

The article is by Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball --

— and it is up to his very high standards, I think. Here’s some more of that passage quoted by chicagogreen in the original post:

There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group. On the baseball field, it would be hard for a player to sacrifice his team’s interest for his own. Baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team one: by doing what’s best for himself, the player nearly always also does what is best for his team. "There is no way to selfishly get across home plate," as Morey puts it…. In football the coach has so much control over who gets the ball that selfishness winds up being self-defeating. The players most famous for being selfish — the Dallas Cowboys’ wide receiver Terrell Owens, for instance — are usually not so much selfish as attention seeking. Their sins tend to occur off the field.

It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them.

This is not so different from the point Dave Berri always make about scoring — though Lewis points out that other stats are also prone (albeit somewhat less so) to to being misused in this fashion (i.e., for an individual player’s benefit, rather than the team’s).

Excellent article, and worth discussing.

by PJ Martinez on Feb 15, 2009 1:09 AM EST reply actions

Good article, but...

An interesting article, but it reads too much as a promo of Shane Battier, rather than a true look at the intangibles of playing basketball. For example, I would like to know who were the other 14 players on the list of underpaid, underrated superstars. (Would one of them be Scal?) Not only that, but one has to look at how some of the superstars of old maximized their ability. I think one has to look at Larry Bird as an example of a player who knew how to get the most from his abilities, even defensively. There is also no mention of the “locker room factor,” and how occasionally passing up a shot in favor of a teammate, while it might lower the scoring percentage, might serve to energize the other player if he is in need of a boost. Bill Russell makes mention of that desirability in an anecdote about Bob Cousy.
And how about Russell, anyway? it is almost unbelievable that this article does not mention the best TEAM player in the history of basketball and probably all of sports period. Almost everything that is talked about in the article, from shot blocking to defensive strategy, was in the mind of Russell long before Battier came along.
Long ago, Stern made a choice to market individual players rather than teams, which accounts for some of the problems we now have. But this article does the same thing: it focuses on a single player and for this reason seems just a touch disingenous.

by PastorGreen on Feb 15, 2009 6:19 PM EST reply actions

I thought he was using Battier as an example not arguing that he is somehow the highest form of the thing. And I agree with you, sometimes the lower odds thing has to be done for human reasons, keeping the bigs that run happy, having the nerve to take the tough/late shots, etc.

The bottom line for me is that NBA stats are garbage, and Battier’s thinking that kinda knowing a thing gets you to kinda operate on that knowledge, but having someconcrete back up gets you to take it as a truth and operate on that basis.

I always especialy hated the team rebounding numbers expressed in absolute terms. Team A got 42 rebounds and team B has 50. Well, that is great if their field goal percentages are identical and/or if 4 offensive rebounds did not occur on one set where one big guy kept missing and getting the rebound which happens all the time. If you hold an opponent to 20% shooting than even rebounding numbers are not anywhere near good enough. Rebounds should be expressed in percentage terms, Team A got 80% of their defensive boards, team B, a great offensive rebounding team (and a poor shooting team) grabbed a league leading 30% of their offensive rebounding chances, etc.

by chicagogreen on Feb 15, 2009 6:33 PM EST reply actions

I read it.

Definitely worth checking out (and Moneyball as well, if you haven’t read it) I’m a fan of Battier’s game, but your team has to be in a position to take advantage of guys like theat.

Intangibles guys like Battier, Posey, TPrince & maybe Ryan Gomes are worthless unless you have an efficient offense & consistent defense. In a good system, they’re perfect complimentary players.

Gomes played well for losing Celtics teams, so his defense, screens, charges, etc had little effect on a team that missed open shots, failed to defend consistently, etc.

Conversely, when Posey came to a vet-laden Celtics squad, his work complimented the starters perfectly. He’s less effective on the Hornets in my opinion, because they ask him to do more.

Prince was the perfect compliment to Billups, Rip, Sheed & McDyess. Now he’s scrambling to pick up the missed assignments & shots that AI & Sheed are blowing.

Another controversial ‘intangibles’ guy is Brian Scalabrine. He was a good bench player on 2 Nets Finals teams. That team had a system, vets and role players who weren’t asked to do anything outside their roles.

When he came to a young Celtics team, he didn’t know what to do. He tried to do too much, then he backed off even what he did well when the team started losing. Even though their games are wildly different, he looks better coming off the bench than TA, because he rarely steps outside of his game now. He’ll take advantage of opportunities, but you rarely see him trying to create off the dribble or drive to the hoop like he was a couple of seasons back. He’s not the player that Posey is, or the athlete that TA is/was. But he does seem to know his role within the system.

That’s the real value of looking at an ‘intangibles’ guy.

by LuckyNumber07 on Feb 17, 2009 7:18 PM EST reply actions