Quote:
Originally Posted by tbach24
See, this is one of the times when stats can both help and hurt us. Houston is an incredibly slow paced team. That 3.2 per game would increase on other teams. With players like T-Mac and Yao (or in this case, just Deron Williams), you don't really want a high usage guy, just a player who will make teams pay if they don't guard him. And when they do guard him, that's a small forward who won't be involved in the paint. Just because you have low usage and don't add anything else to the offense, doesn't make you a bad offensive player. I guess I'll add in the caveat that you wouldn't want to make him a major player in your offense, but given the offensive depth of this draft, I really like Battier.
Real fast: I agree with the bolded, but it also means that you generally won't impact the offensive end often.
but you see it's not fair to cherry pick. Battier has never been a high usage player, and this is in spite the fact he's played on a few different team makeups. (I mean, Rockets w/o Tmac; Rockets w/o Yao; Rockets w/ both; Memphis w/ Pau; etc.) So - yes, Battier will be efficient, yes, he will never hurt you offensively, but no, he's not ever going to be even a 3rd option.
Jesus, Rockets fans and NBA fans complained for the longest time the biggest hole was the Rockets had no go to scorer outside of the big 2 which led to scoring droughts - Battier does his stuff, but he just doesnt impact the offensive end often. You mentioned the Rockets pace factor as well, which is a fine observation, but there still were a bunch of teams that played slower. (Portland, Detroit, SAS, etc.) They were 21st this year - I suppose if you put Battier on the Nuggets he would shoot 5 3s a game rather than 4. Fine.