Shane Battier and the value of LEGO players

Yeah, Shane Battier is pretty much the anti-AI.

Read it a couple days ago – very excellent article right there.

Great Article

That article quotes the Rockets as having data to show AI is very good when he goes to his right and very bad when he goes to his left.

“That article quotes the Rockets as having data to show AI is very good when he goes to his right and very bad when he goes to his left.”

I could’ve told you that without access to Morey’s data. And the entire association seems quite wired into that concept, given how he’s defended.

The way to best use Iverson is to send him right with the ball, wait for the defense to commit an extra defender to slow him down, and then swing the ball back to the left for easy offense.

Or not have him on your team and not worry about things that are obvious like that.

“I could’ve told you that without access to Morey’s data. And the entire association seems quite wired into that concept, given how he’s defended.

The way to best use Iverson is to send him right with the ball, wait for the defense to commit an extra defender to slow him down, and then swing the ball back to the left for easy offense."

You think?

I always try to draft Shane Battier in fantasy. He has the same effect. He is a great player.

“The way to best use Iverson is to send him right with the ball, wait for the defense to commit an extra defender to slow him down, and then swing the ball back to the left for easy offense.”
-Petey

Generally, if Iverson is driving to his right, why would the defense send help from the left side? From other teams POV’s that doesn’t make a lot of sense, as they would be helping on his off-hand (a hand/side that he can’t finish on). From Pistons POV, if you just mean that we should run P&R with AI heading to the right then, yeah, that’s pretty self-explanatory. But, as we saw last night, it’s not the hardest thing in the world to counter

What the Bucks did yesterday (Sessions especially) was completely overplay AI’s right hand, even on P&R’s, to the point where AI had to start his drives going left. So, AI had to beat Sessions cleanly enough going left, to then switch the ball back into his right hand without getting stripped. Even then, the Bucks didn’t give help on AI’s left hand, the extra defender basically only came to help on AI from the right/strong-side and only if he beat Sessions cleanly and got the ball back into his right (Skiles is a good coach :( )

"Generally, if Iverson is driving to his right, why would the defense send help from the left side? "

The standard defense on Iverson is to send help from under the basket with a big. Then they send a defender from the weak side (left side) to rotate to under the basket to replace the big sent out to delay Iverson.

Thus, the opposition covers the two offensive players on the weak side (left side) with one defender. You swing the ball back to the left, and you get easy offense.

“What the Bucks did yesterday (Sessions especially) was completely overplay AI’s right hand”

Iverson is not being tasked to reverse the ball. Curry has been reasonably insistent all season that Iverson should be driving to score, not driving to set up easy offense for the team.

Curry shares the misconception folks around here have of Iverson as “dynamic scorer” rather the reality of Iverson as “defense deformer” to benefit his four teammates on the floor.

Sweet Christ, somebody change the record.

“The standard defense on Iverson is to send help from under the basket with a big. Then they send a defender from the weak side (left side) to rotate to under the basket to replace the big sent out to delay Iverson.”
-Petey

Honestly, I just haven’t seen teams do that very often, if at all, this season, so I don’t think it can be called “the standard defense on AI.” AI’s been effective off P%R’s at passing the ball back to Sheed/Dice for pick&pop shots, but I can’t remember a single team sending a big man out from the paint to help on AI’s drive, other than when they come out to help/show on a P&R. Also, the rotational defense stuff you mention is pretty standard, it’s not special AI defense. Basically, the idea that teams regularly send a big man to help defend AI’s one on one drives, is something that I don’t see happening nearly as often as you seem to think it does.

lol- should be “P&R’s”

“Honestly, I just haven’t seen teams do that very often, if at all, this season, so I don’t think it can be called "the standard defense on AI … Basically, the idea that teams regularly send a big man to help defend AI’s one on one drives, is something that I don’t see happening nearly as often as you seem to think it does.”

Agreed!

There is no reason for teams to employ the traditional ‘wall-off Iverson defense’, because Curry is tasking Iverson with something VERY different than his normal role.

Iverson is most dangerous when he gets the ball on the left side and drives east to west to move to the right side, thus shifting the strong and weak sides of the floor. With handchecking outlawed, there is no way for defenses to delay this maneuver long enough for them to recover other than sending a second defender to ‘show’.

But Curry has been tasking Iverson with driving north to south to score.

The two exceptions:

1) The initial run of games when Iverson was “officially” running the point. Note that these games were when we beat LA and Cleveland, although we were inconsistent and there were still many kinks to work out.

2) The run of games when Rip was injured. Curry tasked Iverson with using his traditional strength during the fourth quarters only, which seemed like a smart energy-conserving strategy to me to employ for all games, but turned out just to be an emergency strategy on Curry’s part that he abandoned after Rip returned.

Iverson has been tasked with being a offensive finisher for most of his time in a Pistons’ uniform, and that’s simply not his strength. If he were used in his normal role as an offensive creator, our offense would be firing on more cylinders…

“Iverson is most dangerous when he gets the ball on the left side and drives east to west to move to the right side, thus shifting the strong and weak sides of the floor.”

hmmm. Subjectively, this make sense, as it does appear AI is more comfortable going side to the side, then he does in a role as a pure, Tony Parker style penetrator (sorry if that sounds bad :) ). The one issue that it could lead to though, is without the threat of a long-range jumpshot, teams may just sag off AI enough that it could be hard for him to beat his man off the dribble, so the defense wouldn’t have to send a second defender (or the big will just stay camped out in the lane, trying to force AI to take the mid-range jumper). I guess that’s where bigs that can shoot/stretch the floor like Dice and Sheed come in handy, but it still makes me uncomfortable to rely too heavily on our bigs to be our jump shooters/floor-spacers.

“The one issue that it could lead to though, is without the threat of a long-range jumpshot, teams may just sag off AI enough that it could be hard for him to beat his man off the dribble”

Iverson copes with this by being able to jump-stop and knock down the wide open jumper from 14ft and inside at a pretty high clip. If he gets close to free-throw line distance, he’s a very accurate jump shooter.

It’s the 18ft and out jumpers that he can’t knock down at an acceptable rate.

The mid-range jumper is how he punishes a sagging defense on the drive.

The Midget’s midrange game is BROKE this year. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even with Denver he was at least fun to watch because he’d randomly drop 40 and 10 on somebody. Whether it’s solely a coaching issue or not, we really have the “shell of the man formerly known as Allen Iverson” on our team right now, but we shook up our whole fucking team philosophy like we were getting “World Beater Allen Iverson circa 2003.”

We should’ve made Vinnie Johnson 2.0 out of him the minute he came over.

“The mid-range jumper is how he punishes a sagging defense on the drive.”
Which team does this punish, exactly?

Back to the Battier article… Here’s a rather cutting and accurate rebuttal (via Ball Don’t Lie):

http://talkingpointfreesports.com/article.aspx?s=3000&su=0&a=101250&t=Lies%2c_Damned_Lies%2c_and_Obama

“Back to the Battier article… Here’s a rather cutting and accurate rebuttal (via Ball Don’t Lie):”

I read that, and while it’s a reasonably interesting refutation on cultural grounds of the Lewis article, it’s not a cogent refutation of Battier’s value on the court.

Battier, much like the Bruce Bowen of a couple of years ago, is valuable in ways that “traditional” stats don’t pick up.

If you are an effective perimeter defender who can knock down the wide open 3pt shot, you are HIGHLY valuable as long as you play on a team with good shot creators.

Various iterations of plus/minus stats can pick this up, but “traditional” stats like PER tend to totally miss the value players like that bring.

I’ll just cut ‘n’ paste from the other thread…

Afflalo pretty much fits the Battier model perfectly:

- Above average perimeter defender
- High basketball IQ
- Useless on offense, except for being able to hit the wide open 3pt shot
- Likely to be very reasonably paid throughout his career
- Needs to play with shot creators to be effective