I've always said I'd rather have Shane Battier than Rudy Gay, certainly on a team that is any good. My reason was simply looking at the records of the Rockets and the Grizzlies before and after they made the swap. Now I have better reasons: Lego - I like that. Well, Ed, what do you say now? Now your hated intangibles are more tangible:
He'd be great, but there's no way the Rockets are giving up their glue guy ... Also his age puts him a little outside the team's window of opportunity.
How's that working out for the Rockets? They've had one of the best big men in the NBA the last couple of seasons and they can't even procure HCA, seemingly. It's easy to have a theory, or to pretend like you have some "special sauce" that captures intangibles... playing coy allows theories to be something that cannot be disproved. Battier is sub-10 in PER. While PER is not perfect, especially for a defensive player like Battier, that is such a miserable total that I can't imagine Battier is doing the Rockets much good. Ben Wallace's PER is 12.6 this year, for crying out loud... 3 points higher. Ed O.
Josh Childress is a similar sort of glue player who helps his team in "quiet" ways, but he's younger and thus fits better with this team's window. Childress is also more productive in the more obvious, easier-to-quantify ways, too. So, he'd be a great get for Portland in the off-season, if they can swing it.
As you well know, they've also had horrendous injury issues. They had Yao before they got Battier and were much worse. And they had one of the longest winning streaks of all time last season. Did you read the article? Sure. Does "PER" calculate the effect you have on your teammates? Are you saying that there's no such thing? Re: Josh Childress. I've not noticed a similar effect produced by having Childress on your team. Plus, check out the description of the way Battier processes information on opponents and acts on it. He may be a killer combination of smart, and able to apply his smarts to the game. He is getting on a bit, I will admit. But I'd love to see him tutor Batum.
I've been banging that drum (quietly) for awhile too. He's one of the main reasons I'm not dead-set on seeing KP make an impact move before the deadline ... unless it's too good to pass up.
It would be cool if we could get Childress and either Bibby or Andre Miller this summer via free agency.
Kind of puts the so-called need for a trade into a little perspective. Yeah RLEC is valuable to other teams, but his contract is also VERY valuable to the Blazers. If you could sign Bibby and Childress in the offseason because you kept RLEC, it's basically like trading RLEC for Bibby and Childress. That deal seems a hell of a lot better than some of the proposed trades I've read and dreaded around here. Especially because I'd be pretty pissed if we traded RLEC and/or Webster, Outlaw, Sergio, Bayless, Blake and got back a player that wasn't significantly better than what Bibby and Childress could bring. If we can't get Gerald Wallace or Caron Butler, without giving up Outlaw, Rudy, or Bayless, I'd rather trade Lefrentz to ourselves for '09 cap space.
How much cap space will we actually have though? Enough to get those players? If so, maybe we do hold onto Raef.
Renouncing Fyre, Raef and Diogu would get the team about $8 million under the cap. Renouncing Blake and Outlaw would each allow the team to get around $4 million more under the cap. So they could at max end up around $16 million under the cap, but that would mean no more Outlaw.
Battier's value goes far far beyond his stats. He's been injured for much of this year too btw, so that is impacting his stats.
are you talking homecourt throughout or just in the first round? if it's just the first round, you simply are not correct. last year with yao missing 27 games and tmac missing 16 games, the rockets had homecourt advantage in the first round. two years ago with yao missing 34 games and tmac missing 11 games, the rockets had homecourt advantage in the first round. the problem of course was that the rockets didn't have yao in the playoffs last year and had a yao severely limited just coming back from a broken leg two years ago.
Battier was healthy for all of Houston's 22 game winning streak last year. 11 games of that 22 game winning streak featured either Yao or McGrady injured. The freakin' Grizzlies made the playoffs the last 3 years Battier was on the team. They never went to the playoffs before Battier was with the Grizzlies, and they've been in the lottery since the day the Grizzlies traded Battier to the Rockets. The Rockets won 34 games with Yao and McGrady the season before the Rockets acquired Battier. The Rockets won 52 the first season Battier joiner the Rockets. The Rockets won 55 last year.
come on now. the season before the rockets got battier, yao and tmac combined missed 70 games. the season after they got battier, yao and tmac combined missed 45 games. last season, yao and tmac combined missed 43 games. so unless the presence of battier had some positive effect on yao and tmac's health, i'd say you are greatly overstating battier's impact.
Considering the author of this book... http://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Art-Winning-Unfair-Game/dp/0393057658 ...just had a multi-page article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all ...all about how just underrated Shane Battier is, I'd say I'd say I'm dead on perfect.
