Battier's best at keeping foes' stats down
Shane Battier #31 of the Miami Heat defends against Carmelo Anthony #7 of the New York Knicks in Game Three of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. (May 3, 2012) Credit: Getty Images
Zero points, zero rebounds and zero assists. According to the boxscore, that is what Shane Battier contributed to the Heat's 87-70 win over the Knicks in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.
According to his Heat teammates, however, he contributed enough to be awarded the game ball. That's because Battier, an NBA journeyman, managed to hold the Knicks' only healthy star in check Thursday night. That's because the stat line that should be used to measure Battier's performance was the one that came after Carmelo Anthony's name, the one that pointed out that on a night when the Knicks needed him most, he was able to score only 22 points and shoot 7-for-23.
"I love those boxscores," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Battier. "I love looking across the line and seeing a bunch of zeroes across but he [still] had as much impact as anybody."
Michael Lewis, the author of "Moneyball," wrote a magazine article two years ago that basically likened Battier's use of statistics to that of Billy Beane's in baseball. Battier, who went to Duke, spends hours studying his opponents, reduces their tendencies to a mathematical formula and then uses it to gain any edge he can on them.
"I'm not the most athletic guy in the world," the 6-8, 225-pound Battier said. "I can't jump very high and I'm not very quick. But what I can do is think the game. I can think the game every possession. That's been my strength my entire career.
"I just try to really understand the strengths and weaknesses of a team and an individual down to a percent. It's not easy to do, but I've gotten used to it. That's what's kept me in this league for 11 years."
Battier, the defender whom Kobe Bryant once said is most likely to humiliate him, signed with the Heat two weeks before the start of the season and could be the difference that pushes the Heat to a title this year. He already has made a big difference in this first-round series, which the Heat is one win away from sweeping entering Game 4 Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
Battier helped come up with the strategy of fronting Anthony in Game 1, and his presence on defense has taken a great deal of pressure off LeBron James, who otherwise would draw the majority of the defensive duty on Anthony.
"He's a very smart and crafty defender," James said.
Though Battier has long studied his defensive matchups, he learned to reduce them to statistical formulas when he was playing for the Houston Rockets from 2006-11. Rockets general manager Daryl Morey is an MIT graduate and sabermetrics guru and introduced Battier to his way of thinking.
Though the Rockets and Battier have kept their way of thinking secret -- "You wouldn't understand it and you would be bored," he told a reporter Friday -- it seems to be working in this series.
When asked what his metric reveals about the Knicks in this series, Battier laughed. "Don't let Carmelo Anthony score a lot of points."
Hmm. An English major could have figured that one out.
