A long one, but worth the read. I look forward to the panel explaining it to me.

Love it. Rec’ing this fanshot.

REC’D – sorry I can only rec it once.

Of course it is written by the superstar Micheal Lewis great find. We could spend all day commenting on this – and maybe we should but briefly -

The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way into every major sport.

Is particularly ironic as we all know that the author’s MoneyBall brought the Jamesian statistics into the popular culture. Daryl Morey is known as the Billy Beane of Basketball because of Micheal Lewis’ wonerful book.

Anyhoo – I will also add now that this is a glaring example of Basketball IQ – I see Jason Kidd (not current version) as the offensive version of Shane Battiers’ defense, but offense collects statistics as was one of the major points of this article. So - given all of these smart players -— are the Sacramento Kings morons?

There is a lot written about the NBA and very, very little of it is as good as that article. Great, great stuff.

But I don’t really think it’s quiiite as groundbreaking as it seems at first blush. Everyone who pays attention to the NBA knows that Shane Battier is a terrific defender, good-character and “glue” guy. I don’t think that’s particularly earth-shattering. Yeah, you can come up with stats to prove that and spot other possible glue guys, and it’s particularly interesting how they’re using stats to influence how to coach someone to defend and come up with new approaches to the game.

But the big picture stuff: not too earth shattering. Everyone knows that you need Doug Christies and James Poseys and Robert Horrys who don’t put up great stats but who make the team better with the little things.

Is that Morey picked up another similar player last summer whose previous team undervalued him, dumped him for relative scraps just to get him off the team, returned eight of its leading nine scorers – all but him – and has seen its win percent fall almost 30% to be the worst team in the league.

Lakers: Derek Fisher (glue wannabes – Ariza (not yet young fella) and Walton (just isn’t)
Celtics: Rajon Rondo, and maybe Leon Powe?
Cavs: just rename them the LeBrons – the rest of team are supporters not glue
Spurs: I want to say Duncan or Popovich. So many choices they are a glue team. I will go with Ginobili.

You could argue Kevin Garnett for the Celtics because he grinds the horses to glue. Can you see Kendrick Perkins without KG’s influence?

But, whatever.

As someone stated above, if you’re here you probably care enough about the NBA to know that Battier is a terrific defender and intangibles guy (even if we’re not sure how, though the article has plenty to say on that). What I found really interesting was the attitude that Battier’s quotes conveyed and the way that the people who studied him spoke about his temperament.

The author (or was it Wetzel?) calls him shrewd, but he comes off as outright cynical to me, defiantly so. The way that Lewis characterized his detachment from his peers and the emotional aspect of sport is almost unsettling. Battier seems smart, but even more he seems to be nurturing a chip on his shoulder.

That got me to thinking about all of the great defenders who could be characterized as defiant. Obviously – despite the accepted truisms that wins are the only statistics that matter and that defense wins championships – pro sports are pervertedly skewed toward rewarding offensive production. So it seems natural that players with an affinity for defense (whether as the result of intelligence, quality coaching, or natural gifts) should develop a defiant persuasion in response to the hypocritical pattern. Yes, great offensive players can also seem defiant (Kobe, LeBron) but it’s more posturing, less genuine and there’s more joy in it.

And this defiance seems to manifest itself differently with different personalities. Battier is cynically defiant, Garnett is proudly defiant, Bowen is underhandedly defiant, Rodman was irreverently defiant, etc. I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions to this apparent pattern, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless.

I wonder if this is a recent development resulting from the increased focus on and rewarding of star scorers in the NBA, or something inherent to the psychological makeup of great defenders. Since I don’t know much about basketball prior to the mid-eighties, I’ll ask the more (*ahem) age-advanced contributors here: Would you say that a significant portion of the great defenders of generations past (KC Jones, Bill Russell, Dave DeBusschere, etc.) had this defiant streak in them?