Seeing Through the Stat(isti)c(s)

Houston’s Shane Battier is my new favorite basketball player. He shouldn’t be flattered: I didn’t have a former favorite basketball player. I don’t follow basketball. But I may now that I know about Battier.

In an article by Michael Lewis in the current New York Times Magazine, Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who recruited and signed the power forward, has this to say about his acquisition: “He’s, at best, a marginal N.B.A. athlete.” “Shane can’t create an offensive situation.” “He can’t dribble, he’s slow and hasn’t got much body control.”

High praise indeed. And the numbers (remember how they don’t lie?) back Morey up. The stats insist that Battier doesn’t score many points, blocks few shots, seldom steals the ball and makes few assists.

Oh, but there is this: with Battier on the floor, the Rockets win. Houston went on a rampage last season and reeled off a string of twenty-two straight victories, the most ever in the league with the exception of the ‘71-’72 Lakers. For exactly half of those games either Yao Ming or Tracy McGrady rode pine due to injuries. The Rockets player with the most floor-time during the streak was Battier. The season before he joined the franchise, Houston went 34-48. The next year, 52-30 and the year after that, 55-27. Nor is this an isolated fluke. The Memphis Grizzlies drafted Battier out of Duke, then went from 23-59 his rookie season to 50-32 in his third year. Battier is a journeyman, a competent workman at best, yet, notes Lewis, “every team he has every played on has acquired some magical ability to win.”

So what’s the deal? Battier is, says Morey, “the most abnormally unselfish basketball player he has ever seen.”

Lewis points out in his article that basketball, unique among team sports, provides tremendous opportunities for selfishness. It won’t work in baseball: David Ortiz can’t increase his slugging average by shoving Dustin Pedroia out of the batter’s box and taking additional cuts. Or football: Terrell Owens doubtless would, if he could, shoulder teammates aside to snag passes, but he’s clean across the field. A basketball player, however, can shoot when he should pass or, if it’s not a percentage shot, pass when he ought to shoot. The numbers on his paycheck correlate to the numbers in the box score so players do what ratchets up their own stats instead of what helps the team overall.

Enter Shane Battier. Battier does things that help the team win. He makes few rebounds, but the team snags far more of them when he is in the game, because he knows how to position himself to free a teammate to get to the boards. He doesn’t score a lot of points, but knows the trick of feeding his pals when they are in position for an easy shot. He swats the ball away as an opponent takes it from waist to shoulders; doesn’t count as a blocked shot in the N.B.A., but prevents the hoop all the same. He routinely guards the best shooters in the league, and their scoring averages dip against him. In fact, the data reveal that with Battier on him, Kobe Bryant actually becomes a liability; the Lakers would score more if they took him out of the game!

“I call him Lego,” Morey explains. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together.” Or, as his high school coach Kurt Keener notes, “he had this incredible ability to make everyone around him better.”

“Do nothing,” Paul counsels the Philippian believers, “from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Bible students know what comes next, and wise ones wince a little bit: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,” who didn’t seem to be padding his resume as a religious superstar - hanging around with hookers and bagmen, missing appointments with the dying daughters of bigshots to heal menstruating women in the street, dissing seminary professors to teach fishermen how to inherit the kingdom. Comfortable enough in his identity with the Father, Our Lord saw no need to pad his stats and instead felt free to wash the feet of the benchwarmers.

In John 8.12, Jesus tells the religious leaders that he is the light of the world, but they can’t see it. The exchange comes right after the drama of the adulterous woman (v.1-11), and Jesus winds it up by telling them that at the crucifixion, “you will know that I am He” (v.28). It seems the standard box-score numbers don’t reveal Messiah; he must be seen in relationship and in sacrifice. When he’s out there, he makes everyone around him better and throws the tempter off his game. “In him,” Paul tells the Colossians, “all things hold together” (1.17). Jesus is Lego: when he’s present, the pieces start to fit together.

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” Or, if that seems too big a stretch, in Shane Battier.

This entry was posted on February 16, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.