非数据型全明星--伟大的巴蒂尔，魔球理论的NBA版本 ， 描述： The No-Stats All-Star

sylk

非数据型全明星


一个数据上的反常现象是：他的杰出并不体现在个人统计或者扣篮大赛上，而是在球场上。巴蒂尔让他的球队变得更好，通常是好得多，并且让他的对手变得更糟，通常是糟透了。

迈克尔·刘易斯
出版于2009年2月13日

一个来自杜克大学，6尺8寸的前锋……







33岁的莫雷受聘于火箭，他要用一种新的眼光来看待球员了。



教练的梦想：有场比赛前，巴蒂尔请求主教练阿德尔曼让自己坐板凳，这样他就能去防守对方得分能力超强的第六人吉诺比利了。“NBA里没人会这么做。”火箭总经理莫雷说




巴蒂尔知道如何让科比的得分效率下降：1.处于无球状态。2.让他投远射，然后用手遮他脸。3.逼他从左边突破，而不是右边。

他或多或少地向我承认了，这部分工作让他保持冷静。“每天都是这一套。”他说。他努力想要说明一个人在昏暗的体育馆里面对着18557个狂热的家伙，怎么能毫无感觉。“如果你每天晚上都吃牛肉卷，那你都不会想再尝一口了。”

对他而言，这些声音中唯一让他快乐的——他深爱的母校的名字，人群的喧嚣——就在于它们标志着自己这一天里最糟糕的部分结束了：在热身与球员介绍间的那11分钟。和对方球员插科打诨的11分钟。所有球员在比赛前都向对方表现得异常有爱、和谐，但实际上他们并不熟，甚至压根也不打算混熟。“我恨在那浪费时间。”他说，“我曾经试着跟人们聊聊，但是后来我发现实际上没人对我有兴趣。”他并没有声称那些职业球员其实很了解他，也喜欢他，而只是静静地回到更衣室去。


然后巴蒂尔突然又出现了，面对着丰田中心史上最多观众的呐喊声，和姚明大肆嬉戏着。当他要被更多地审查而非理解的时候，反而是他一天中最美好的时光。怪哉。
NBA的常规赛是很难让人提起神来的。昨天巴蒂尔都没能告诉我他们三天前是跟谁比赛的。（“尼克斯！”一分钟以后他嚷嚷起来，“我们跟尼克斯打的！”）而今晚，虽说是一月中旬一场周中的比赛，却有所不同。今晚火箭要对上湖人，而巴蒂尔要去防科比。用他的话说，那家伙是最有可能羞辱他的了。巴蒂尔和火箭的决策人员们都太熟悉这个故事情节了。“我确定科比会打垮肖恩的。”莫雷告诉我，“因为每当肖恩上一次防死科比以后，这一幕就会上演。”上一次是2008年3月16日，火箭击败湖人夺下22连胜——联盟历史上第二长的连胜。这场比赛吸引了全国的电视观众，共同见证了科比痛苦的47分钟：33中11，24分。“很多人都看见了。”莫雷说，“湖人比赛的时候每个人都会关注科比，所以每个人都看到了科比在挣扎。而这也是他们第一次看到我们一直都在见证的场景。” 巴蒂尔惯常去防守联盟里最危险的进攻球员——LBJ，CP3，PP——并且就算不能完全防住，也能让他们的表现远低于正常水准。他总是默默无闻地做到这些，以至于没人真正注意到他所胜任的工作。


上赛季，为了让人们注意到巴蒂尔的防守，火箭的公关部会派工作人员到对手的更衣室去问一些诱导性的问题，诸如巴蒂尔刚刚搞定了哪位超级巨星。“为什么今晚你会陷入这么多麻烦中？”“他是不是做了些什么来干扰你的比赛？”根据巴蒂尔所说：“他们通常会说今晚不在状态。他们觉得我就是个木桩。”他能感觉到有些球员甚至想要被他防守。“没有人害怕被我防。”他说。莫雷也证实了：“是真的。有两个理由：1.他们觉得没有人能防住自己。2.他们觉得肖恩能防住他们的说法太搞笑了。他们全都认为他名过其实。”甚至当球员介绍的时候，NBA TV的Ahmad Rashad一边整理赛前报告，一边说：“巴蒂尔要尽力阻挡科比了。”这让嘉宾主持佩顿大笑，并且说：“不可能的。”而另一位嘉宾主持克里斯韦伯补充道：“我想科比会得50分，然后湖人狂胜19分。”



早年，Hoop Scoop杂志曾将巴蒂尔列为全美七年级学生中第四好的球员。当他1997年从Detroit Country Day School毕业的时候，作为全国最佳高中篮球运动员获得了奈史密斯奖。等他于2001年以平纪录的131场大学比赛胜利，包括当年的NCAA冠军，从杜克大学毕业的时候，他又作为全国最佳大学篮球运动员获得了奈史密斯奖。他在第一轮被可悲的孟菲斯灰熊队选中——他们可不光是一支糟糕的篮球队，更是NBA历史上胜率最低的球队——于是他几乎立刻就淡出人们的视野了，即便是作为一个缺乏天赋的特权球员。巴蒂尔加盟灰熊一年后，球队经理被炒，而NBA的传奇人物杰里·韦斯特——他的身形被用作NBA的标志——接手了球队。“从韦斯特上任的那一刻起他就想尽办法要交易我。”巴蒂尔说。如果韦斯特找不到下家，也要部分归因于巴蒂尔看起来没有上升空间了：球场上的其他大多数球员，甚至一些板凳球员，也要比他有天分得多。“他最多就是个NBA的边缘球员。”莫雷说。



从巴蒂尔的新秀年到他的第三个赛季，灰熊的战绩由23-59上升到50-32，并且打进了季后赛。巴蒂尔在灰熊的最后三个赛季，他们每年都进入了季后赛。2006-07赛季之前，巴蒂尔被交易到上季34-48的休斯顿火箭。他在火箭的第一个赛季，球队就以52-30收官，之后，去年是55-27——包括一波22连胜。NBA历史上只有1971-72赛季的洛杉矶湖人连胜过更多场次。而且由于伤病，这22场比赛中有11场，火箭是在他们两大球星姚明和麦蒂不能同时上场的情况下进行的。而在连胜中打了最长时间的火箭球员，就是巴蒂尔。今年，巴蒂尔正从休赛期的脚踝骨刺移除手术中恢复，只打了火箭队一半的比赛。而这突显了他的重要性。“今年，”莫雷说，“有他的时候我们是支冠军队，没他的时候我们只能YY季后赛了。”



于是我们发现了一个关于篮球的神秘现象：一个在NBA里被广泛认为充其量是一台由超级巨星发动的机器上一个可替代的小齿轮的球员，却能让他效力的每支球队都获得赢球的魔力。
解决这个神秘现象差不多是莫雷的核心工作了。2005年，火箭老板亚历山大决定为他不断输球的队伍找一个新的管理层，尤其是要找一个愿意重新思考这项运动的人。“我们现在有了所有的资料。”亚历山大告诉我，“我们也有用来分析资料的计算机。而我想用这些资料取得进步。我雇佣莫雷就是因为我想要一个不止是从一般角度观察球员的人。我的意思是，我甚至不确定我们在用正确的方法比赛。”


90年代有一种感染了职业篮球的病毒，即使用数据以求从新的、更好的角度去评估球员和球队战略，迅速传播到了各大体育。不光是篮球和美式橄榄球，还有足球、板球、英式橄榄球以及，据我所知，斯诺克和飞镖——每一项都有一种亚文化，就是一群不光把其看作游戏，更看作待解决的问题的聪明人。正因为如此，几乎是不可避免的，LBJ投中压哨球，匹兹堡钢铁工人队赢得超级碗都被当作是一种可能，哪怕并无相关事实。比赛变得充满了可能性。就像职业卡片计数器一样，现代的思考者们也想尽可能高效地掌握这些可能性。当然了，在此之前他们必须先了解这些。因此他们有了新的数据，探索获得新资料的方法，对评测球员所做的每一件小事的影响都有浓烈的兴趣，因为这可能导致了他的球队获胜。就这种求知精神而言，职业篮球里的这种亚文化和棒球、橄榄球或是飞镖的没什么不同。篮球的不同在于，它可能是最像人生的运动了。


当华尔街的投资家亚历山大在1993年买下火箭队的时候，还没人产生篮球需要数据革命的概念。当时莫雷还在西北大学，正在考虑怎么在职业体育界找到一份工作，以及盘算着申请就读商业学校。他是一名高大的高中篮球运动员，但浑身却散发着充满戏谑和令人厌恶的气氛。“很多人都想隐藏这些。”他说，“但这对我来说毫无意义。”三年级的时候他偶然接触到了棒球作家Bill James的作品——这个家伙很大程度上引发了目前职业体育界的巨变——于是决定他这一生的目标就是要把James的理论付诸实践。他通过常规性的学术生涯来维护这个志向——考入麻省理工大学的Sloan管理学校，选修了企业方向。他并不是要当企业家，而是因为他明白要想经营职业体育，唯一的办法就是自己拥有一支球队，而要想有足够的钱去买一支球队，他唯一能想到的办法就是做大买卖。“这是90年代，还没有Theo呢。”莫雷说，他是指Theo Epstein，对数据学很感兴趣的波士顿红袜队总经理。他也读过Bill James的书，于是开始将数据分析的新时代引入棒球。“所以，”莫雷继续说到，“我以为变富是唯一的办法。”除了想要借此得到一支职业球队，莫雷对钱没有别的兴趣了。


但实际上他不需要巨额财产。从商业学校毕业后，他去波士顿一家名为Parthenon的咨询公司工作，而后在2001年为一个想要收购红袜的财团做咨询。这起收购失败了，但是一个与此相关的财团收购了凯尔特人，并且雇佣了莫雷帮助进行重组工作。莫雷不光确定了票价，还发现了一个新的总经理以及能从更好的角度评估篮球运动员的家伙们。凯尔特人取得了进步。当亚历山大听说33岁的莫雷就是重新思考这项运动的领军人物时，就雇佣了他以重塑火箭。


莫雷到火箭之后，球队工资总额的一大部分——NBA设置了工资帽并向超过的球队征收奢侈税——在接下来的几年间将被两位超级巨星占据：麦蒂和姚明。莫雷必须在不花钱的前提下想办法改进火箭。“我们负担不起另一个超级巨星了，”他说，“所以我们要找一些我们认为是被低估了的非巨星。”本质上，他是在找低廉的球员。“NBA里的稀缺资源，”他说，“不是超级巨星，而是被低估的球员。”在过滤了NBA的中层球员之后，他列出了一份15人的名单，灰熊队的巴蒂尔就名列前茅。而这甚至让雇佣莫雷去重新思考篮球的人也感到困惑了。“我所知道的就是肖恩的数据，”亚历山大说，“而很明显，它们并不出彩。他让我很失望，而我很不愿意看到这一幕。”


亚历山大并不是唯一一个这么想的。过去是，现在也是，更容易找出巴蒂尔做不了的事情而非他能做的。他的常规数据毫不起眼：他得不了多少分，抓不了几个篮板，盖不了多少帽，断不着几个球而且也送不出几次助攻。更夸张的是，很容易就能看出有什么是他永远也做不了的：他的得分手段基本都是一接到传球就立刻投篮。“那就是一个人无法提升自己攻击手段的迹象。”莫雷说，“因为你只要靠一个人就能防住那种投篮。除非你有一个对方无法单人防守的球员，否则你创造不了得分机会。肖恩就创造不了得分机会。他需要处于空位。”作为娱乐，莫雷给我看了一些罕见的巴蒂尔在并非处于空位的情况下得分的录像。其中的一大部分都是他在面对更矮小的防守球员——于是巴蒂尔背筐单打，然后用左手勾手得分。“跟你说实话吧，这很可能就是他唯一的进攻动作了，”莫雷说，“但是看看他如何做假动作。”巴蒂尔在面对防守人投篮前，确实做了好几次假动作。“他做这个是因为担心被盖。”巴蒂尔弱就弱在身体条件的限制，或者如莫雷所说：“他不能运球，他太慢而且也不能很好的控制身体。”


巴蒂尔的比赛异常古怪，它结合了明显的弱小与近乎无敌的强大。当他在场上，他的队友变得更好了，通常好得多，而他的对手变得更糟了——通常糟透了。他也许抓不下大把的篮板，但他有一种不寻常的能力，能提升队友的篮板水平。他不经常投篮，但当他投篮时，都是最高效的。他也有诀窍能把球传到处于正确位置的队友手中，他也很少失误。在防守端，虽然他要防守的都是NBA最高产的得分手，他也能让他们的投篮命中率大幅下降。同时他还能在某种程度上提升队友的防守效率——很有可能，莫雷总结到，是通过在各种细微方面的帮助。“我管他叫Lego（一种拼装玩具），”莫雷说，“当他在场上时，一切都结合得很好。任何能够获胜的因素，只要是通过才智而非天赋得到的，肖恩都做得超出预期。我打赌他是百里挑一的人才。”


莫雷也注意到了一些别的东西，但是他拒绝讨论，因为在如今的职业篮球，新的信息是很值钱的，而火箭队认为他们就有一些新信息。而他要说的是，篮球场上的一大挑战就是去评测正确的事情。任何球队的五名球员都远不止是数量的叠加而已。火箭队付出了大量精力以求揭晓球队元素间细微的关联。为了做到这个，他们需要一些篮球界历史上未能提供的东西：有意义的数据。因为在篮球历史中，人们总是测评容易计算的而非重要的数据——得分、篮板、助攻、抢断、封盖——这些数据扭曲了比赛的概念。（“创造了个人数据统计单的家伙，”莫雷说，“应该被拖出去枪毙。”）举例来说，一个人得多少分，并不能真实反映他在多大程度上帮助了球队。另一个例子：如果你想知道一个球员的篮板能力，你需要知道的不是他是否抓到了篮板，而是当未能投中的球弹到他所在区域的时候，他的球队得到篮板的可能性。


现在有一种趋势，尤其是篮球领域，在团队利益和个人利益的取舍中，并非为团队利益打球的家伙反而更占便宜。在篮球界，为个人利益而牺牲团队是很不好的。棒球是一项披着团队外衣的个人运动：对自己最有利的，往往也就是对团队最有利的。“你不可能自顾自地冲过本垒。”莫雷解释道，“要不是还有一套阵容，我可以每次都去冲击本垒，那就破坏了团队的效率——这可以用类推法。没有David Ortiz，Manny Ramirez就没法击球了。在波士顿的时候，我们就有个组织后卫拒绝传球给某个家伙。”橄榄球的教练对谁持球有很强的控制权，所以自私反而会弄巧成拙。那些最著名的自私鬼——比如达拉斯牛仔队的外接手Terrell Owens——并不在公众关注下表现得自私。他们的罪恶都发生在场外。


而这个问题最有可能发生在篮球里——一项球员经常面临在最大化自己的利益和球队获胜间做出抉择的运动。这种选择是十分复杂的，以至于往往球员都没充分意识到自己正在做出选择。


在没必要的时候投一个臭球只是最明显的例子。一个组织后卫可能会为了一次助攻而放弃空位投篮的机会。每晚你都能看到这一幕：当他快下获得空位机会的时候，他并没有上篮，而是传给后面跟进的队友。队友通常会用激情四射的扣篮做个了结，然而得分的手段却减少了。“对组织后卫而言，多一点助攻比多一点得分更值钱。”莫雷说。封盖——看起来很不错，但是除非你能确保封盖后球的去向，否则你并没给团队帮什么忙。球员们陶醉于把球扇到观众席第五排上去的壮观场面，然而这却导致了他们并不关心对手还会拿回球权。穆托姆博，火箭队42岁的替补中锋，就是以封盖闻名。“在封盖后保护球方面，他一直是联盟里做的最好的。”莫雷说，在他打算继续表彰穆托姆博不自私之前，却忍不住笑起来，“但是即便是穆大叔也有自私的一面。他就是靠摇手指成名的。”（穆大叔封盖之后，都会牢牢抓住球，然后冲他的对手摇起手指来。在我的地界可没门！）“如果他没能得到球，”莫雷说，“他就摇不了手指了。而他喜欢这么干。”如果不是大叔为了摇手指而要长时间持球的话，球队就能变得更好了。“我们要冲他大喊：发动快攻，发动快攻——然后再摇你的指头！”


当我问莫雷有没有什么数据是无法让球员通过损害球队而从中得利的时候，他不得不努力想想了：“进攻篮板，”他说，但是又推翻了自己，“不过如果你的责任是退防的话，那抢进攻篮板也会对球队产生反作用。”于是得出结论：没有什么数据统计是篮球运动员不能通过自私的手段来累计的。“每当我们要谈合同的时候，都会深入思考这个问题。”他说，“我们可不希望刺激一个家伙去做对球队不利的事情。”——而篮球令人吃惊的一点就是要做到这一点有多容易。“他们都会最大程度利用自认为能赚钱的方面。”他笑着说，“现在对球员来说日子可不好过，因为有很多球队的想法都不同了。他们必须重新思考自己靠什么赚钱。”


在看过巴蒂尔过去两年半的表现后，莫雷开始认为他是个例外：一个他所见过的最不同寻常的、不自私的球员。甚至可以说是一个领先于分析家的球员，能够通过各种细微的、难以被测评的、影响到了他个人利益的方法来帮助球队。“我们上一任教练把他拖去参加会议，告诉他需要多投篮。”莫雷说，“我不确定这件事是不是发生过。”上赛季当火箭和马刺比赛的时候，巴蒂尔被安排去防守对方最危险的得分手：吉诺比利。然而吉诺比利是板凳球员，他的上场时段是和巴蒂尔这种首发球员不同的。巴蒂尔私下去找主教练阿德尔曼，告诉他让自己打替补，等吉诺比利上场的时候再派他上去。“NBA里没人会这么做。”莫雷说，“没人会说把我摁板凳上吧，这样我就能一直防守他们最好的得分手了。”


一项广为人知的，火箭决策层很关注的数据就是正负值，它简洁地表明了当某个特定球员在场上时的比分情况。它的最初计算形式并不完美：当一个人和世界上四个最好的球员在同一支队，并且他们上场他才上的时候，他也能有一个看起来很不错的正负值，即便这并不能说明他的贡献。莫雷表示他和他的工作人员可以纠正这些潜在的曲解——尽管他对他们如何做到这一点含糊其辞——从而让正负值变成测量一个球员作用的有力工具。一个好球员的值可能是正3——那意味着当他上场的时候他的球队平均领先对手3分。在其鼎盛赛季，超级控卫纳什的值是正14.5。在与湖人的比赛前，巴蒂尔的值是正10，使他步入德怀特和加内特之列，那两位可是全明星常客。他的职业生涯值为正6.“正6是个惊人的数字。”莫雷说，“那就是41胜和60胜的区别。”他说了几个上赛季同样为正6的球员：文斯卡特，卡梅隆安东尼，和麦蒂。


同湖人的比赛开始的时候，莫雷在火箭板凳席后第九排靠过道的地方找了个座。这一晚的情况可不太妙。休斯顿缺少了他们受伤的超级巨星，麦蒂（他当时正在俱乐部里看电视），最好的辅助球员阿泰斯特也受伤缺阵了（他正穿着街头服装在板凳席上加油）。而湖人则是群星云集。火箭队场上唯一有一份像样的球鞋合同的就是中锋姚明了。跳球的时候他把球拨回后场，巴蒂尔拿到了球，开始了他的比赛


在火箭交易到巴蒂尔之前，决策层的分析师已经研究过他的价值了。他们知道所有能体现他效率的细节，也知道他降低对手效率的能力。比如说，他们知道被巴蒂尔防守的球星会突然间失去投篮的手感。他们不知道的是为什么。莫雷能看出巴蒂尔的作用，但他不知道他是如何做到这些的。大约200场比赛后，他已经是这个课题上的专家了——他今晚又要再研究一遍。譬如他指出，与其去抢一个自己未必能抓到手的篮板，巴蒂尔更倾向于把球点给队友以求稳妥。当防守一个篮板能力较差的人时，巴蒂尔会在球还在空中时就放弃自己盯防的人去阻挡对方最好的篮板手。“观察他。”一位休斯顿分析师在赛前告诉我，“当球出手后，他会坐一下加索尔的膝盖。”（加索尔一般是在湖人打中锋的。）在防守端，巴蒂尔仿佛能把科比投篮时感到的不适最大化，而这种表现并不会被任何个人统计记录下来。比如当科比把球从腰部举到下巴时，巴蒂尔把球拍掉了，而不是等到科比把球举得更高然后做出投篮动作。“当你观察他的时候，”莫雷说，“你能看到他所做的就是始终站在对方面前，尽力阻挡对方投篮时的视线。我们甚至都没注意到他在做什么，直到他做到了。我真希望我们注意到了，可是我们没有。”


人们总是说科比在比赛中没有弱点，但那不是真的。赛前，巴蒂尔会得到为他特制的资料包。“我们只给他一个人提供这个。”莫雷说，“我们给他一连串的资料，由他来筛选。大多数球员都像高尔夫球手，需要冷静的思考。”这些资料主要是将球场分成很多不相关的区域，并且计算出了科比在不同的地方、面对不同程度的防守压力以及与其他球员的不同距离下投篮的可能性——他在没有切入、挡拆和接球跳投的时候得分的情况等等。巴蒂尔通过研究这些资料让自己对通常要防守的超级巨星有了很多了解。例如，数字告诉他艾弗森从右边突破的时候是NBA最高效的得分手；而从左边突破会毁了他的球队。金州勇士的前锋杰克逊甚至是个更奇怪的案例。“史蒂芬杰克逊，”巴蒂尔说，“数据分析显示他从右边突破更有威胁，但是他却喜欢从左边走——频率是一般人的两倍。”马刺队的吉诺比利在数据分析上是个变态：他在比赛中没有任何不平衡——没有一种相对更行之有效的防他的办法。在不运球和不传球的时候他都同样高效，左右两侧的突破也是一样，在任何一点的投篮都是如此。


科比并不是这样。他在很多很多事情上都比任何人做的更好，但是球场上有些地方，以及他的有些投篮，却让他对球队没那么大帮助了。当他向篮下突破时，左右两侧都有可能，但是当他从左侧突破时，效果就要差些。当他接球立刻投篮时，要比他在运球之后再投篮更高效。如果他从罚球区或者底线突进去，那会是致命的；在二者之间，就没那么严重了。“最糟糕的事情，”巴蒂尔说，“就是对他犯规。”这倒不是因为科比是个特别出色的罚球手，而是如莫雷所说：“犯规是防守最糟糕的一种结果。”火箭队落实想法的一个重要体现就是“绝对不要犯规。”按火箭数据分析的观点，最理想的结果，是让科比向左侧运球然后来一个18英尺跳投。如果他们能让这一幕出现的足够多，那这一晚就相当令人满意了。“如果他用40次投篮得到40分，我还有脸活下去”巴蒂尔说，“我的工作不是让他不要得分，而是尽力让他低效。”他不可能知道科比在场上任意一点投篮的比率，但是这也无妨。


火箭坚持让巴蒂尔防守科比的原因在于他能让对手进入自己的“超低效区域”。这么做的效果是很让人吃惊的：巴蒂尔防守科比时，科比不仅帮不了球队什么大忙，甚至连湖人整体的进攻都比当这位NBA最佳球员不在的时候还要差。“科比在的时候湖人的进攻明显应该更好才对。”莫雷说，“但是如果是肖恩在防他，那就不是啦。”一个被莫雷描述为“NBA的边缘球员”的家伙不仅防住了这项运动史上进攻端最伟大也是最聪明的威胁之一，甚至还让他妨害了自己的球队。


如果你对此还一无所知，那你绝不可能通过看比赛而了解到哪怕一丝一毫。科比比巴蒂尔更敏捷，所以后者不得不一直追逐前者，就像Keystone Cops一样（一个无声喜剧电影系列）。科比经常过早投篮，可他看起来还是无懈可击。在防守端，巴蒂尔与队友间的交流远超过场上的任何人，但是在看台上的人是看不出这有什么意义的。不过他却发誓说这一切都是有理由的：当他决定要去场上的哪个位置以及采取什么角度的时候，他就会不断提醒自己回想一小时前一边在漩涡生成池里泡脚，一边在看的那一堆纸。“数字会驳倒我的想法，也会支持我的想法。”他说，“如果有了任何问题，我都会相信数字。数字是不会说谎的。”尤其当数字和他的直觉达成一致的时候，效果就很明显了。“这是一个细小的不同，”莫雷说，“但是它却有重大的含义。如果你对某件事有一种直觉但却没有强有力的证据做后盾，那你可能会有几分‘做了再说’的想法，因为毕竟是对是错还不确定。”


知道了各种可能性，巴蒂尔就可以十分确定地去实施一种本来不确定的策略。他可以专注于一个过程而不在乎任何意外情况。这是很重要的，因为在篮球中，就像其他事情一样，运气都占一定成分，而巴蒂尔是不会让这个分散自己注意力的。在与湖人的比赛中我们只有一次偶然瞥见了非常鲜明、让人满意的关于高效策略和低效策略的比较——那就是能否反映出各种可能性。在离篮筐10英尺的地方，科比背筐持球，巴蒂尔在背后顶防他，科比后撤步来了一个12英尺跳投，球打在篮筐前沿上。而在不久前，巴蒂尔倚躺在看起来很像NBA板凳的柔软座椅上的时候，他的队友布伦特·巴里就处于相似的防守位置。科比靠住巴里，命中一记6英尺投篮并且造成犯规。不过这是个例外：通常你得不到完美的比较。当科比被迫从离篮6英尺到12英尺的时候，或者当巴蒂尔的手遮住他眼睛的时候，你看不到那些可能性正悄然从湖人身上转移到火箭身上。你所看见的只是记分牌上的数据，当半场结束的时候，54平，科比以16分领先得分榜。


但是他用了20次出手才得到这些分数。他开始向裁判抱怨。科比是NBA历史上一张杰出的“大嘴”。一位大联盟里的棒球球员曾经给我展示了一盘扬基队三垒手Alex Rodriguez在击球位的慢动作回放。回头看看接球手站在哪，严格意义上并不违反棒球的规则，但却触犯了不成文的规定。如果一个击球手这么做了，那他会发现下一个球就是瞄准他眼睛来的。A-Rod，这位棒球界最出色的击球手，就掌握了这门向后看的艺术：头不动，而是用眼睛，在恰当的时间观察一下。这就好像一个亿万富翁发现自己的退税单上少了点什么的眼神一样。这有什么好抱怨的？我想，然后意识到了：正是这种本能将A-Rod和其他球星区分开的。科比也有同样的本能。今晚科比就抱怨说巴蒂尔拉扯他的运动衫，巴蒂尔趁人不注意的时候推他，巴蒂尔在践踏人性。就在半场结束前，巴蒂尔把裁判叫到一旁说到：“你我都知道科比一直在干这个。我打得很干净。别信他的鬼话。”不久后，又没能得到哨声的科比狠狠地砸了一下球，冲裁判大喊大叫，然后被吹了个技术犯规。


就在那之后，半场结束，但巴蒂尔却表现出了一个极细微的自私行为。火箭的决策层发现了巴蒂尔在比赛中一个颇有慈善色彩的小过失：在任何一节的最后一秒，当他拿着球站在半场线以后时，巴蒂尔都不会把球直接扔向篮筐，去做一次不恰当但并非不可能的得分尝试。他总是在哨响的一毫秒之后把球胡乱扔出去。莫雷对此只能想到一个解释：投丢一次就会降低巴蒂尔的投篮命中率。“我告诉他在我们的数据统计里是不会算上这种胡抛的。”莫雷说，“但是肖恩很聪明，他知道他的下一支球队未必会聪明到不计算这种胡抛。”


今晚，在半场结束前一毫秒，球又落在巴蒂尔手中。他缓慢地移动着，确保哨响后再把球扔过整个球场然后冲刺回更衣室——他还连一次投篮都没有。


1996年，篮球时报的一位年轻作家Dan Wetzel认为走进一位高中篮球明星的生活中，见证他被一流的篮球学院录取会使作品更真实简洁。他选择了巴蒂尔，而后花了五个月时间追踪采访，却越来越怀疑了。“八年间我已经完全了解了高中篮球。我和N多的孩子交谈过——可以说是这个国家每一位杰出的高中篮球球员。”Wetzel说，“有一种公众观点认为他们都是暴徒，但并非如此。他们中的很多人真的是好孩子，而有一些则非常非常机灵。科比非常机灵，勒布朗非常机灵。但是绝对没有像巴蒂尔那样的。”


Wetzel注视着这个孩子被各种录取通知单淹没，然后要做出艰难的选择。巴蒂尔把他的选择缩小为六所学校——肯塔基，堪萨斯，北卡，杜克，密歇根和密歇根州大——并且礼貌地告诉别人，让他自己决定。接着他开始观察哪所学校能把对他学习的干扰降到最低：他的平均绩点是3.96，即将要接过Detroit Country Day School校长为N好学生颁发的奖杯了。他向每位主教练承诺每周可以有15分钟的电话联系时间。这些人可都是世界上最著名的篮球教练，同时也是最执着的招生人员，但是巴蒂尔没有给出任何例外。当刚刚赢得全国冠军的肯塔基教练Rich Pitino，想在巴蒂尔规定的时间之外给他打电话的时候，巴蒂尔直接就把肯塔基从他的名单里除去了。“一个17岁的家伙怎么有胆量那么做？”Wetzel问道，“只是因为Rick Pitino在规定时间之外打电话就直接把他淘汰了。”Wetzel自己回答了这个问题：“这可不是‘这个17岁的家伙真有点意思’，而是‘这不是真的’。”


巴蒂尔还是青少年的时候，就已经很精明了，因为他很有纪律性。当他决定要去哪之后，就给在纽约Peekskill读高中的明星大前锋埃尔顿·布兰德打电话——说服他跟自己一起加盟杜克。（布兰德现在费城76人打球）“我想他会是第一任黑人总统，”Wetzel说，“他是奥巴马之前的奥巴马。”


去年七月，当我们坐在Detroit Country Day Scholl的图书馆里，看着，或者说打算看着他在2008年三月对阵科比时的表现。巴蒂尔更喜欢谈论奥巴马，他的两本书他都看过。（“第一本比第二本要好。”他说）他表示讨厌看自己打球，然后就用事实证明了。我每次想要让他注意显示器上的某个动作时，都会被他引得分神。


我指着他的脚步动作，他就指着看台上一位穿着巴蒂尔球衣的年轻美女。（“你很少看到有靓女会穿着巴蒂尔的球衣。”他说，“一般都是12岁以下或者60岁以上才会穿。来自我的人口统计学。”）我注意到了他在科比投篮前用手遮住他眼睛的不寻常的方法，而他就开始侃侃而谈高中的老图书馆（“我每天上课前都来这。”）他认为我对这场比赛产生额外的兴趣就是缺乏想象力的证据，我很确定。“我七年如一日。”他说，“而这却是人们想要讨论的唯一一场比赛。这就好像‘噢！你会防守？’”于是他不想看自己比赛的一个理由变得清晰了，除了单调，就是他自己头脑始终清醒。既然不能指望靠比赛本身来测评他的表现，他就自己做。在某种程度上，他已经看过这盘录像了。当我终于强迫他看的时候，他正趁科比把球从腰间举到下巴的的时候将球从科比手中拍掉。“如果我是记录员，我会把那个算一次盖帽。”巴蒂尔说，“但是这什么也不算。他们并不把那个当作盖帽。而我每个赛季至少要这样做30次。”


关于职业运动员，有些情况是数据统计体现不出来的。我就知道两个例证。第一个是，你只有别在那些他们练习如何去回答问题的地方提问，才能得到一些有意义的答复。举例而言：在一名球员的更衣室里提一些关于他自己的问题是不会有结果的。首先，他还赤身裸体着；其次，他正被一些不能信任的家伙包围着：他自己的队友。第二个是，似乎他们童年时候的一些琐碎小事会对他们的职业生涯产生巨大的影响。有一位清场击球手，他把自己的生死都寄托在7岁时候自己改造的一个秋千上；一位四分卫在他的投掷动作中有个瑕疵，因为他总在模仿自己的父亲。而此刻，在Detroit Country Day School的图书馆，离体育馆不远，巴蒂尔又回到了自己成为一个篮球球员的地方。他对于四个月前发生在自己和科比间的对决并不感兴趣，甚至更愿意去谈谈自己12岁时的事情。


当他七年级的时候进入Detroit Country Day就读时，他已经有足足6尺4了，一年之后就长到了6尺7。“我习惯于长高了。”他说，“他们总是说：‘查查他的出生证明。’”他也是学校里唯一一个父亲是黑人，母亲是白人的孩子。稀奇的是，刚有一位著名的黑人球员从这所学校毕业：克里斯·韦伯。韦伯赢得了三座州冠军，获得了全国年度最佳高中球员。“克里斯是个大孩子，”他高中的篮球教练Kurt Keener说，“每个人都希望肖恩能成为下一个韦伯，但是肖恩不是那样的人。”巴蒂尔此前从没听说过韦伯，而且他也搞不懂，为什么当他去AAU（业余体育联盟）的操场和城里的黑人孩子打球的时候，自己总被不恰当地拿来和韦伯对比。“我一直听到‘他太软了’或者‘他根本不算运动员’。”他的高中教练意识到了他的问题，因为他是从白人高中的比赛到了黑人做主的AAU赛场。“我还记得努力想让他在比赛表现得更有天赋。”Keener说，“但是这就好像教一个古典舞蹈家去玩嘻哈一样。于是我得出结论：他在这方面并不自负。”


巴蒂尔算是黑白配，而篮球似乎既能算黑人运动，也能算白人的。也许需要一座哲学博士的小图书馆才能真正解释清楚这个原因。比如说，那些白人球员用来证明自己性格的举动——制造带球撞人、争抢地板球——他们似乎更愿意在锃亮的木质地板而非城市的沥青地上做这些，这是巧合吗？当球队是一所大学校的一部分时，“为团队而战”是不是更容易？无论如何，那些在AAU球场上和巴蒂尔打球的城里孩子把他看作是个玩白人游戏的乡下孩子。而那些在常规赛季和巴蒂尔打球的郊区孩子却把他看作是从一个专门用来圈禁黑人的星球上来的访客。“在马丁路德金纪念日，班里的每个人都会看着我，好像我就应该知道他是谁，为什么这么重要。”巴蒂尔说，“有次学校要拍集体照，他们给每个孩子都发了把梳子，只有我拿到的是一根牙签。”这让他很囧，“我不太高兴。但是我才八年级！我正试着融入进去！”可是在这，他却被卡在将他当作白人的黑人世界和把他当作黑人的白人世界之间。“以后我做的每一件事都是受了这个的影响。”他说，“我只能让自己远离每个人。我一个人吃饭，一个人学习。在比赛里我都觉得有些迷失自我了。”


在比赛里迷失自我表示充分融入比赛，而充分融入比赛则表示你很难注意到他了。在高中他几乎总是场上最好的球员，但是即便如此他也当不了明星。“他有点唯命是从。”Keener说，“他有一种不可思议的能力，可以让周围的每个人变得更好。但是我不得不告诉他，要打得更刚毅自信。在他新人年，我们输的一场比赛就是因为他太尊重学长了。”即便很明显他已经是最好的球员并且可以拥有随意开火权了，他还是更喜欢在团队里扮演一个角色。但是他不自以为是并不代表他没有抱负，没有雄心，或者不想引起注意。当巴蒂尔跟我谈过他人生那一段不愉快的时光后，他说：“韦伯赢了三次州冠军，拿到了篮球先生和奈史密斯奖。但是我也赢得了三次州冠军，也得了篮球先生和奈史密斯奖。所有那些他们说我做不到的事，在八年级的时候我就已经都做到了。”


“他们是指谁？”我问。
“基本所有人。”他说。
“白人？”
“不，”他说，“街头的家伙。”      


第三节开始了，巴蒂尔的脸出现在头顶的大屏幕上，他时而鼓动人群，时而又安抚他们。他比其他任何球员都更精通这个：戴上牙套，称赞当地的珠宝商，宣读公共服务的通告，让球迷制造噪音。当我跟火箭的一位工作人员谈起巴蒂尔在大屏幕上露脸的次数似乎多的不寻常时，他说：“可能是因为他是唯一一个愿意干这个的。”


下半场我和Sam Hinkie在一起，他是火箭篮球运营部的副主席以及首席分析师。比赛很胶着。科比投丢的球总是比投进的更多。两队都没办法确立领先优势。不过比比赛更吸引人的是Hinkie的反映——当他很明显希望火箭获胜的时候，他对球场上各种不同事件的反应并不像典型的火箭球迷（或者NBA球迷）。


“我更关心本来应该发生什么，而不是实际上发生了什么。”Hinkie说。他可是斯坦福大学的MBA。他继续解释说，NBA比赛的进程是由总比分的极小一部分决定的。一支球队平均每场能得差不多100分，但是NBA三分之二的比赛最后分差不到6分——甚至两三分。因此他认为最重要的是重视每一件小事。湖人队的阿里扎，命中率29%的三分投手，投进了一个变态的三分球。人群发出哀号声，而Hinkie则快要精神错乱了。“阿里扎能投进的时候，就很难办了。”他说，“因为这个差不多算是随机事件。随机的三分球啊！”当科比没有被迫采取跳投，而是突破到篮下的时候，他说：“这算3/8分。事物是在累加的。”


在这种不确定性的精神状态下，我们观看着科比与巴蒂尔间的战斗。照Hinkie的说法，这场面棒极了。“肖恩能把大多数人从高效区域逼进低效区域，但是对科比这么做就是自讨苦吃。这就好像是那个经典情节：你自己选个死法吧。”但是火箭并不打算从容赴死。巴蒂尔又再次把科比逼进了致命的低效区域。就算球掉进去了，那它们也是从火箭决策层不介意的地方投出去的。“你能做的就那么多。”在科比投进一个18英尺投篮后，Hinkie说，“把他逼进低效点然后进行对抗。”比分到了97-95，湖人领先，还剩三分多钟，有人叫了暂停。“我们做得很好。”Hinkie很高兴，“之后发生的事情就是随机的了。”


目前NBA战绩最好的球队正被姚明和一帮不被当回事的球员们逼得狼狈不堪。片刻后，我抬头看了看记分板：


科比：30
巴蒂尔：0


Hinkie循着我的视线看去，然后笑了：“我知道这个看起来不太好。”他说，参考了一下球员的个人总得分。巴蒂尔不在其中。他接着说：“我们就算输，也是12个人一起。现在无论发生什么，教练组都不会说：‘如果我们没有巴蒂尔该多好。’”


篮球比赛中有一个数据统计方面的惯例：如果一支球队在比赛结束前领先的分数比剩下的分钟数多的话，那就有80%的可能赢球。如果你的球队在最后一节过半的时候还领先6分以上，而你很担心稍后的交通问题，那你可以放心地走了，要知道你错失这场胜利的概率只有不到20%；从另一方面讲，如果你错失这场胜利，那简直让人不敢相信，因此能让人发疯了。而今晚两队都没有足够的领先优势好让球迷吃颗定心丸，或者让火箭的管理层去计算他们的可靠区间——但是在比赛还剩2:27的时候，湖人领先了4分：99-95.然后他们又拿到了球权。球传到科比手中，巴蒂尔将他逼向左侧——逼向姚明。科比运球之后采取了一个他能做到的最好的投篮——从巴蒂尔的角度而言：向左移动的时候投出一个远距离2分球。他投丢了。火箭重新追上，阿尔斯通从罚球区突破抛投命中：99-97，时间1:13。湖人又投丢了一球，阿尔斯通抓下篮板交了暂停。还有59秒。


不管火箭布置了什么战术，当球传入内线的一瞬间，这战术就出问题了。兰德里刚得到球，就被湖人拍掉。球掉在地上，球员们飞奔而上，扑了一地。


55…54…53…


面对这一幕混乱的场面，巴蒂尔冷静地站在一旁，纹丝不动。当他看见自己的队友很可能要抢到球的一刹那——虽然队友还没能抢到——他就冲向底角。


50…49…48…


底角的三分球是NBA最高效的投篮方式。可以说如果火箭的对手在对篮球的分析上有什么是和他们相似的话，那就是对底角三分球的态度：聪明的球队会充分利用这一点并且尽力阻止对手这么做。然而有时候你只能预先计划到这一步，尤其是在这种像打街球一样的时刻。而此刻，火箭队的阿尔斯通正是街球历史上最传奇的人物之一：跳跃的灵魂。当他在哈林的洛克公园表演了一个惊世骇俗的动作之后，就有了这个绰号。“肖恩打不了街球，因为在街球场上没人想看他的比赛。”阿尔斯通早些时候跟我说过，“你最好能拿出点让我们大呼小叫的东西来。没人会在乎造带球撞人的家伙。”


火箭的进攻已经崩溃了，也就没了阿尔斯通发挥的余地，因为他需要持球推进。此刻他还站在靠近中场线的地方。湖人的防守也崩溃了：没人还站在他们本来应该在的位置。而唯一一个站在他应该在的地方的人——处于空位，站在最高效的投篮点上——就是巴蒂尔。当莫雷谈起篮球智商的时候，脱口而出：“明白应该去哪。”放在球场上，像巴蒂尔那样的，就需要明白应该去哪。砰：阿尔斯通一记长传到巴蒂尔手中。砰：巴蒂尔三分出手，毫不犹豫。空心入网。


火箭100，湖人99


43…42…41…


火箭的决策层稍后会计算出，此刻球队获胜的可能性已经从19.2%上升到72.6%。有一天，一个聪明的家伙会去研究这种可能性的转变和噪音的量级之间的关联，不过现在，人群已经完全疯狂了：听起来真的就像是休斯顿丰田中心史上最多的观众人数。科比在中场得球，悠闲地控着球，寻找机会。现在是他的时刻，一位伟大球员命中注定的时刻，每个人都知道他要出手，而他也一定会出手。刚才在球场的另一端，关键的不是投手，而是那个投篮。现在投篮不算什么，投手决定一切。


33…32…31…


科比——今晚31中12——发动进攻，运球向右突破，冲向罚球区中间，那是他的强点。巴蒂尔切断了他的去路。科比把球扔回给了在射程之外的费舍尔。


30…29…


像所有人一样，巴蒂尔相信比赛仍在科比的控制之中。他把球传出去，唯一的原因就是这样他还能再把球要回来。科比退了回去。他此时离三分线足有4英尺，离篮筐大约30英尺。


28…


科比接到球，离篮筐27.4英尺——稍后火箭的决策层会算出这个距离——起跳了。突然间他通向篮筐的视线被巴蒂尔的手挡住。这不是第一次了。从2002-03赛季起，科比在比赛最后的胶着时刻投出过51个离篮超过26.75英尺的三分球，并投丢了其中的86.3%。一年多前，科比在对阵骑士时投丢了一个28.4英尺的三分，湖人输了球。今天之后的第三个晚上，由于科比投丢了一个可以扳平比分的27.5英尺投篮，湖人将会输给魔术。所以即使现在这个球碰巧投进了，巴蒂尔也有脸活下去。


巴蒂尔回头目送球穿过篮筐，落到地上。在那一瞬间他有些神游天外，不像是交通事故的当事人，倒像是个好奇的过路人。然后他笑了。过程都如他所料，但他永远无法控制结果。


迈克尔·刘易斯是《魔球》的作者，也是《名利场》的责任编辑。他的下一本书《家庭游戏》，是关于父亲的回忆录，将会在六月出版。

sylk

The No-Stats All-Star


Robert Seale for The New York Times
Statistical Anomaly His greatness is not marked in box scores or at slam-dunk contests, but on the court Shane Battier makes his team better, often much better, and his opponents worse, often much worse.
Sign In to E-Mail
Print
ShareClose
Linkedin
Digg
Facebook
Mixx
My Space
Yahoo! Buzz
Permalink




By MICHAEL LEWIS
Published: February 13, 2009
Out of Duke University. . . . A 6-foot-8-inch forward. . . .
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Letters: The No-Stats All-Star (March 1, 2009)
Enlarge This Image


Dan Winters for The New York Times


Bill Baptiste/NBAE/Getty Images
Revision Quest Daryl Morey was hired by the Houston Rockets as a33-year-old to look at players in new ways.
Enlarge This Image


Robert Seale for The New York Times
A Coach's Dream Before one game, Shane Battier asked Coach Rick Adelman (right) if he could come off the bench to be able to guard the high-scoring sixth-man Manu Ginóbili. “No one in the N.B.A. does that,” says the Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey.
Enlarge This Image


Robert Seale for The New York Times
Battier Knows Bryant is a Less-Efficient Scorer 1 Off the dribble. 2 Shooting from long range with a hand in his face. 3 Going to his left, not his right.
He had more or less admitted to me that this part of his job left him cold. ‘It’s the same thing every day,’ he said, as he struggled to explain how a man on the receiving end of the raging love of 18,557 people in a darkened arena could feel nothing. “If you had filet mignon every single night, you’d stop tasting it.”
To him the only pleasure in these sounds — the name of his beloved alma mater, the roar of the crowd — was that they marked the end of the worst part of his game day: the 11 minutes between the end of warm-ups and the introductions. Eleven minutes of horsing around and making small talk with players on the other team. All those players making exaggerated gestures of affection toward one another before the game, who don’t actually know one another, or even want to. “I hate being out on the floor wasting that time,” he said. “I used to try to talk to people, but then I figured out no one actually liked me very much.” Instead of engaging in the pretense that these other professional basketball players actually know and like him, he slips away into the locker room.
Shane Battier!
And up Shane Battier popped, to the howl of the largest crowd ever to watch a basketball game at the Toyota Center in Houston, and jumped playfully into Yao Ming (the center “out of China”). Now, finally, came the best part of his day, when he would be, oddly, most scrutinized and least understood.
Seldom are regular-season games in the N.B.A. easy to get worked up for. Yesterday Battier couldn’t tell me whom the team played three days before. (“The Knicks!” he exclaimed a minute later. “We played the Knicks!”) Tonight, though it was a midweek game in the middle of January, was different. Tonight the Rockets were playing the Los Angeles Lakers, and so Battier would guard Kobe Bryant, the player he says is the most capable of humiliating him. Both Battier and the Rockets’ front office were familiar with the story line. “I’m certain that Kobe is ready to just destroy Shane,” Daryl Morey, the Rockets’ general manager, told me. “Because there’s been story after story about how Shane shut Kobe down the last time.” Last time was March 16, 2008, when the Houston Rockets beat the Lakers to win their 22nd game in a row — the second-longest streak in N.B.A. history. The game drew a huge national television audience, which followed Bryant for his 47 miserable minutes: he shot 11 of 33 from the field and scored 24 points. “A lot of people watched,” Morey said. “Everyone  watches Kobe when the Lakers play. And so everyone saw Kobe struggling. And so for the first time they saw what we’d been seeing.” Battier has routinely  guarded the league’s most dangerous offensive players — LeBron James, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce — and has usually managed to render them, if not entirely ineffectual, then a lot less effectual than they normally are. He has done it so quietly that no one really notices what exactly he is up to.
Last season, in a bid to draw some attention to Battier’s defense, the Rockets’ public-relations department would send a staff member to the opponent’s locker room to ask leading questions of whichever superstar Battier had just hamstrung: “Why did you have so much trouble tonight?” “Did he do something to disrupt your game?” According to Battier: “They usually say they had an off night. They think of me as some chump.” He senses that some players actually look forward to being guarded by him. “No one dreads being guarded by me,” he said. Morey confirmed as much: “That’s actually true. But for two reasons: (a) They don’t think anyone can guard them and (b) they really scoff at the notion Shane Battier could guard them. They all think his reputation exceeds his ability.” Even as Battier was being introduced in the arena, Ahmad Rashad was wrapping up his pregame report on NBA TV and saying, “Shane Battier will try to stop Kobe Bryant.” This caused the co-host Gary Payton to laugh and reply, “Ain’t gonna happen,” and the other co-host, Chris Webber, to add, “I think Kobe will score 50, and they’ll win by 19 going away.”
Early on, Hoop Scoop magazine named Shane Battier the fourth-best seventh grader in the United States. When he graduated from Detroit Country Day School in 1997, he received the Naismith Award as the best high-school basketball player in the nation. When he graduated from Duke in 2001, where he won a record-tying 131 college-basketball games, including that year’s N.C.A.A. championship, he received another Naismith Award as the best college basketball player in the nation. He was drafted in the first round by the woeful Memphis Grizzlies, not just a bad basketball team but the one with the worst winning percentage in N.B.A. history — whereupon he was almost instantly dismissed, even by his own franchise, as a lesser talent. The year after Battier joined the Grizzlies, the team’s general manager was fired and the N.B.A. legend Jerry West, a k a the Logo because his silhouette is the official emblem of the N.B.A., took over the team. “From the minute Jerry West got there he was trying to trade me,” Battier says. If West didn’t have any takers, it was in part because Battier seemed limited: most of the other players on the court, and some of the players on the bench, too, were more obviously gifted than he is. “He’s, at best, a marginal N.B.A. athlete,” Morey says.
The Grizzlies went from 23-59 in Battier’s rookie year to 50-32 in his third year, when they made the N.B.A. playoffs, as they did in each of his final three seasons with the team. Before the 2006-7 season, Battier was traded to the Houston Rockets, who had just finished 34-48. In his first season with the Rockets, they finished 52-30, and then, last year, went 55-27 — including one stretch of 22 wins in a row. Only the 1971-2 Los Angeles Lakers have won more games consecutively in the N.B.A. And because of injuries, the Rockets played 11 of those 22 games without their two acknowledged stars, Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming, on the court at the same time; the Rockets player who spent the most time actually playing for the Rockets during the streak was Shane Battier. This year Battier, recovering from off-season surgery to remove bone spurs from an ankle, has played in just over half of the Rockets’ games. That has only highlighted his importance. “This year,” Morey says, “we have been a championship team with him and a bubble playoff team without him.”
Here we have a basketball mystery: a player is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.
Solving the mystery is somewhere near the heart of Daryl Morey’s job. In 2005, the Houston Rockets’ owner, Leslie Alexander, decided to hire new management for his losing team and went looking specifically for someone willing to rethink the game. “We now have all this data,” Alexander told me. “And we have computers that can analyze that data. And I wanted to use that data in a progressive way. When I hired Daryl, it was because I wanted somebody that was doing more than just looking at players in the normal way. I mean, I’m not even sure we’re playing the game the right way.”
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. Not just basketball and football, but also soccer and cricket and rugby and, for all I know, snooker and darts — each one now supports a subculture of smart people who view it not just as a game to be played but as a problem to be solved. Outcomes that seem, after the fact, all but inevitable — of course LeBron James hit that buzzer beater, of course the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl — are instead treated as a set of probabilities, even after the fact. The games are games of odds. Like professional card counters, the modern thinkers want to play the odds as efficiently as they can; but of course to play the odds efficiently they must first know the odds. Hence the new statistics, and the quest to acquire new data, and the intense interest in measuring the impact of every little thing a player does on his team’s chances of winning. In its spirit of inquiry, this subculture inside professional basketball is no different from the subculture inside baseball or football or darts. The difference in basketball is that it happens to be the sport that is most like life.
When Alexander, a Wall Street investor, bought the Rockets in 1993, the notion that basketball was awaiting some statistical reformation hadn’t occurred to anyone. At the time, Daryl Morey was at Northwestern University, trying to figure out how to get a job in professional sports and thinking about applying to business schools. He was tall and had played high-school basketball, but otherwise he gave off a quizzical, geeky aura. “A lot of people who are into the new try to hide it,” he says. “With me there was no point.” In the third grade he stumbled upon the work of the baseball writer Bill James — the figure most responsible for the current upheaval in professional sports — and decided that what he really wanted to do with his life was put Jamesian principles into practice. He nursed this ambition through a fairly conventional academic career, which eventually took him to M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. There he opted for the entrepreneurial track, not because he actually wanted to be an entrepreneur but because he figured that the only way he would ever be allowed to run a pro-sports franchise was to own one, and the only way he could imagine having enough money to buy one was to create some huge business. “This is the 1990s — there’s no Theo,” Morey says, referring to Theo Epstein, the statistics-minded general manager of the Boston Red Sox. “Sandy Alderson is progressive, but nobody knows it.” Sandy Alderson, then the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, had also read Bill James and begun to usher in the new age of statistical analysis in baseball. “So,” Morey continues, “I just assumed that getting rich was the only way in.” Apart from using it to acquire a pro-sports team, Morey had no exceptional interest in money.
He didn’t need great wealth, as it turned out. After graduating from business school, he went to work for a consulting firm in Boston called Parthenon, where he was tapped in 2001 to advise a group trying to buy the Red Sox. The bid failed, but a related group went and bought the Celtics — and hired Morey to help reorganize the business. In addition to figuring out where to set ticket prices, Morey helped to find a new general manager and new people looking for better ways to value basketball players. The Celtics improved. Leslie Alexander heard whispers that Morey, who was 33, was out in front of those trying to rethink the game, so he hired him to remake the Houston Rockets.
When Morey came to the Rockets, a huge chunk of the team’s allotted payroll — the N.B.A. caps payrolls and taxes teams that exceed them — was committed, for many years to come, to two superstars: Tracy  McGrady and Yao Ming. Morey had to find ways to improve the Rockets without spending money. “We couldn’t afford another superstar,” he says, “so we went looking for nonsuperstars that we thought were undervalued.” He went looking, essentially, for underpaid players. “That’s the scarce resource in the N.B.A.,” he says. “Not the superstar but the undervalued player.” Sifting the population of midlevel N.B.A. players, he came up with a list of 15, near the top of which was the Memphis Grizzlies’ forward Shane Battier. This perplexed even the man who hired Morey to rethink basketball. “All I knew was Shane’s stats,” Alexander says, “and obviously they weren’t great. He had to sell me. It was hard for me to see it.”
Alexander wasn’t alone. It was, and is, far easier to spot what Battier doesn’t do than what he does. His conventional statistics are unremarkable: he doesn’t score many points, snag many rebounds, block many shots, steal many balls or dish out many assists. On top of that, it is easy to see what he can never do: what points he scores tend to come from jump shots taken immediately after receiving a pass. “That’s the telltale sign of someone who can’t ramp up his offense,” Morey says. “Because you can guard that shot with one player. And until you can’t guard someone with one player, you really haven’t created an offensive situation. Shane can’t create an offensive situation. He needs to be open.” For fun, Morey shows me video of a few rare instances of Battier scoring when he hasn’t  exactly been open. Some large percentage of them came when he was being guarded by an inferior defender — whereupon Battier backed him down and tossed in a left jump-hook. “This is probably, to be honest with you, his only offensive move,” Morey says. “But look, see how he pump fakes.” Battier indeed pump faked, several times, before he shot over a defender. “He does that because he’s worried about his shot being blocked.” Battier’s weaknesses arise from physical limitations. Or, as Morey puts it, “He can’t dribble, he’s slow and hasn’t got much body control.”
Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly  reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”
There are other things Morey has noticed too, but declines to discuss as there is right now in pro basketball real value to new information, and the Rockets feel they have some. What he will say, however, is that the big challenge on any basketball court is to measure the right things. The five players on any basketball team are far more than the sum of their parts; the Rockets devote a lot of energy to untangling subtle interactions among the team’s elements. To get at this they need something that basketball hasn’t historically supplied: meaningful statistics. For most of its history basketball has measured not so much what is important as what is easy to measure — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots — and these measurements have warped perceptions of the game. (“Someone created the box score,” Morey says, “and he should be shot.”) How many points a player scores, for example, is no true indication of how much he has helped his team. Another example: if you want to know a player’s value as a  rebounder, you need to know not whether he got a rebound but the likelihood of the team getting the rebound when a missed shot enters that player’s zone.
There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group. On the baseball field, it would be hard for a player to sacrifice his team’s interest for his own. Baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team one: by doing what’s best for himself, the player nearly always also does what is best for his team. “There is no way to selfishly get across home plate,” as Morey puts it. “If instead of there being a lineup, I could muscle my way to the plate and hit every single time and damage the efficiency of the team — that would be the analogy. Manny Ramirez can’t take at-bats away from David Ortiz. We had a point guard in Boston who refused to pass the ball to a certain guy.” In football the coach has so much control over who gets the ball that selfishness winds up being self-defeating. The players most famous for being selfish — the Dallas Cowboys’ wide receiver Terrell Owens, for instance — are usually not so much selfish as attention seeking. Their sins tend to occur off the field.
It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them.
Taking a bad shot when you don’t need to is only the most obvious example. A point guard might selfishly give up an open shot for an assist. You can see it happen every night, when he’s racing down court for an open layup, and instead of taking it, he passes it back to a trailing teammate. The teammate usually finishes with some sensational dunk, but the likelihood of scoring nevertheless declined. “The marginal assist is worth more money to the point guard than the marginal point,” Morey says. Blocked shots — they look great, but unless you secure the ball afterward, you haven’t helped your team all that much. Players love the spectacle of a ball being swatted into the fifth row, and it becomes a matter of personal indifference that the other team still gets the ball back. Dikembe Mutombo, Houston’s 42-year-old backup center, famous for blocking shots, “has always been the best in the league in the recovery of the ball after his block,” says Morey, as he begins to make a case for Mutombo’s unselfishness before he stops and laughs. “But even to Dikembe there’s a selfish component. He made his name by doing the finger wag.” The finger wag: Mutombo swats the ball, grabs it, holds it against his hip and wags his finger at the opponent. Not in my house! “And if he doesn’t catch the ball,” Morey says, “he can’t do the finger wag. And he loves the finger wag.” His team of course would be better off if Mutombo didn’t hold onto the ball long enough to do his finger wag. “We’ve had to yell at him: start the break, start the break — then do your finger wag!”
When I ask Morey if he can think of any basketball statistic that can’t benefit a player at the expense of his team, he has to think hard. “Offensive rebounding,” he says, then reverses himself. “But even that can be counterproductive to the team if your job is to get back on defense.” It turns out there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly. “We think about this deeply whenever we’re talking about contractual incentives,” he says. “We don’t want to incent a guy to do things that hurt the team” — and the amazing thing about basketball is how easy this is to do. “They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for,” he says. He laughs. “It’s a tough environment for a player now because you have a lot of teams starting to think differently. They’ve got to rethink how they’re getting paid.”
Having watched Battier play for the past two and a half years, Morey has come to think of him as an exception: the most abnormally unselfish basketball player he has ever seen. Or rather, the player who seems one step ahead of the analysts, helping the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways that appear to violate his own personal interests. “Our last coach dragged him into a meeting and told him he needed to shoot more,” Morey says. “I’m not sure that that ever happened.” Last season when the Rockets played the San Antonio Spurs Battier was assigned to guard their most dangerous scorer, Manu Ginóbili. Ginóbili comes off the bench, however, and his minutes are not in sync with the minutes of a starter like Battier. Battier privately went to Coach Rick Adelman and told him to bench him and bring him in when Ginóbili entered the game. “No one in the N.B.A. does that,” Morey says. “No one says put me on the bench so I can guard their best scorer all the time.”
One well-known statistic the Rockets’ front office pays attention to is plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. In its crude form, plus-minus is hardly perfect: a player who finds himself on the same team with the world’s four best basketball players, and who plays only when they do, will have a plus-minus that looks pretty good, even if it says little about his play. Morey says that he and his staff can adjust for these potential distortions — though he is coy about how they do it — and render plus-minus a useful measure of a player’s effect on a basketball game. A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.” He names a few other players who were a plus 6 last season: Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady.
As the game against the Lakers started, Morey took his seat, on the aisle, nine rows behind the Rockets’ bench. The odds, on this night, were not good. Houston was playing without its injured superstar, McGrady (who was in the clubhouse watching TV), and its injured best supporting actor, Ron Artest (cheering in street clothes from the bench). The Lakers were staffed by household names. The only Rockets player on the floor with a conspicuous shoe contract was the center Yao Ming — who opened the game by tipping the ball backward. Shane Battier began his game by grabbing it.
Before the Rockets traded for Battier, the front-office analysts obviously studied his value. They knew all sorts of details about his efficiency and his ability to reduce the efficiency of his opponents. They knew, for example, that stars guarded by Battier suddenly lose their shooting touch. What they didn’t know was why. Morey recognized Battier’s effects, but he didn’t know how he achieved them. Two hundred or so basketball games later, he’s the world’s expert on the subject — which he was studying all over again tonight. He pointed out how, instead of grabbing uncertainly for a rebound, for instance, Battier would tip the ball more certainly to a teammate. Guarding a lesser rebounder, Battier would, when the ball was in the air, leave his own man and block out the other team’s best rebounder. “Watch him,” a Houston front-office analyst told me before the game. “When the shot goes up, he’ll go sit on Gasol’s knee.” (Pau Gasol often plays center for the Lakers.) On defense, it was as if Battier had set out to maximize the misery Bryant experiences shooting a basketball, without having his presence recorded in any box score. He blocked the ball when Bryant was taking it from his waist to his chin, for instance, rather than when it was far higher and Bryant was in the act of shooting. “When you watch him,” Morey says, “you see that his whole thing is to stay in front of guys and try to block the player’s vision when he shoots. We didn’t even notice what he was doing until he got here. I wish we could say we did, but we didn’t.”
People often say that Kobe Bryant has no weaknesses to his game, but that’s not really true. Before the game, Battier was given his special package of information. “He’s the only player we give it to,” Morey says. “We can give him this fire hose of data and let him sift. Most players are like golfers. You don’t want them swinging while they’re thinking.” The data essentially broke down the floor into many discrete zones and calculated the odds of Bryant making shots from different places on the court, under different degrees of defensive pressure, in different relationships to other players — how well he scored off screens, off pick-and-rolls, off catch-and-shoots and so on. Battier learns a lot from studying the data on the superstars he is usually assigned to guard. For instance, the numbers show him that Allen Iverson is one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A. when he goes to his right; when he goes to his left he kills his team. The Golden State Warriors forward Stephen Jackson is an even stranger case. “Steve Jackson,” Battier says, “is statistically better going to his right, but he loves to go to his left — and goes to his left almost twice as often.” The San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginóbili is a statistical freak: he has no imbalance whatsoever in his game — there is no one way to play him that is better than another. He is equally efficient both off the dribble and off the pass, going left and right and from any spot on the floor.
Bryant isn’t like that. He is better at pretty much everything than everyone else, but there are places on the court, and starting points for his shot, that render him less likely to help his team. When he drives to the basket, he is exactly as likely to go to his left as to his right, but when he goes to his left, he is less effective. When he shoots directly after receiving a pass, he is more efficient than when he shoots after dribbling. He’s deadly if he gets into the lane and also if he gets to the baseline; between the two, less so. “The absolute worst thing to do,” Battier says, “is to foul him.” It isn’t that Bryant is an especially good free-throw shooter but that, as Morey puts it, “the foul is the worst result of a defensive play.” One way the Rockets can see which teams think about the game as they do is by identifying those that “try dramatically not to foul.” The ideal outcome, from the Rockets’ statistical point of view, is for Bryant to dribble left and pull up for an 18-foot jump shot; force that to happen often enough and you have to be satisfied with your night. “If he has 40 points on 40 shots, I can live with that,” Battier says. “My job is not to keep him from scoring points but to make him as inefficient as possible.” The court doesn’t have little squares all over it to tell him what percentage Bryant is likely to shoot from any given spot, but it might as well.
The reason the Rockets insist that Battier guard Bryant is his gift for encouraging him into his zones of lowest efficiency. The effect of doing this is astonishing: Bryant doesn’t merely help his team less when Battier guards him than when someone else does. When Bryant is in the game and Battier is on him, the Lakers’ offense is worse than if the N.B.A.’s best player had taken the night off. “The Lakers’ offense should obviously be better with Kobe in,” Morey says. “But if Shane is on him, it isn’t.” A player whom Morey describes as “a marginal N.B.A. athlete” not only guards one of the greatest — and smartest — offensive threats ever to play the game. He renders him a detriment to his team.
And if you knew none of this, you would never guess any of it from watching the game. Bryant was quicker than Battier, so the latter spent much of his time chasing around after him, Keystone Cops-like. Bryant shot early and often, but he looked pretty good from everywhere. On defense, Battier talked to his teammates a lot more than anyone else on the court, but from the stands it was hard to see any point to this. And yet, he swears, there’s a reason to almost all of it: when he decides where to be on the court and what angles to take, he is constantly reminding himself of the odds on the stack of papers he read through an hour earlier as his feet soaked in the whirlpool. “The numbers either refute my thinking or support my thinking,” he says, “and when there’s any question, I trust the numbers. The numbers don’t lie.” Even when the numbers agree with his intuitions, they have an effect. “It’s a subtle difference,” Morey says, “but it has big implications. If you have an intuition of something but no hard evidence to back it up, you might kind of sort of go about putting that intuition into practice, because there’s still some uncertainty if it’s right or wrong.”
Knowing the odds, Battier can pursue an inherently uncertain strategy with total certainty. He can devote himself to a process and disregard the outcome of any given encounter. This is critical because in basketball, as in everything else, luck plays a role, and Battier cannot afford to let it distract him. Only once during the Lakers game did we glimpse a clean, satisfying comparison of the efficient strategy and the inefficient one — that is, an outcome that reflected the odds. Ten feet from the hoop, Bryant got the ball with his back to the basket; with Battier pressing against him, he fell back and missed a 12-foot shot off the front of the rim. Moments earlier, with Battier reclining in the deep soft chair that masquerades as an N.B.A. bench, his teammate Brent Barry found himself in an analogous position. Bryant leaned into Barry, hit a six-foot shot and drew a foul. But this was the exception; normally you don’t get perfect comparisons. You couldn’t see the odds shifting subtly away from the Lakers and toward the Rockets as Bryant was forced from 6 feet out to 12 feet from the basket, or when he had Battier’s hand in his eyes. All you saw were the statistics on the board, and as the seconds ticked off to halftime, the game tied 54-54, Bryant led all scorers with 16 points.
But he required 20 possessions to get them. And he had started moaning to the referees. Bryant is one of the great jawboners in the history of the N.B.A. A major-league baseball player once showed me a slow-motion replay of the Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez in the batter’s box. Glancing back to see where the catcher has set up is not strictly against baseball’s rules, but it violates the code. A hitter who does it is likely to find the next pitch aimed in the general direction of his eyes. A-Rod, the best hitter in baseball, mastered the art of glancing back by moving not his head, but his eyes, at just the right time. It was like watching a billionaire find some trivial and dubious deduction to take on his tax returns. Why bother? I thought, and then realized: this is the instinct that separates A-Rod from mere stars. Kobe Bryant has the same instinct. Tonight Bryant complained that Battier was grabbing his jersey, Battier was pushing when no one was looking, Battier was committing crimes against humanity. Just before the half ended, Battier took a referee aside and said: “You and I both know Kobe does this all the time. I’m playing him honest. Don’t fall for his stuff.” Moments later, after failing to get a call, Bryant hurled the ball, screamed at the ref and was whistled for a technical foul.
Just after that, the half ended, but not before Battier was tempted by a tiny act of basketball selfishness. The Rockets’ front office has picked up a glitch in Battier’s philanthropic approach to the game: in the final second of any quarter, finding himself with the ball and on the wrong side of the half-court line, Battier refuses to heave it honestly at the basket, in an improbable but not impossible attempt to score. He heaves it disingenuously, and a millisecond after the buzzer sounds. Daryl Morey could think of only one explanation: a miss lowers Battier’s shooting percentage. “I tell him we don’t count heaves in our stats,” Morey says, “but Shane’s smart enough to know that his next team might not be smart enough to take the heaves out.”
Tonight, the ball landed in Battier’s hands milliseconds before the half finished. He moved just slowly enough for the buzzer to sound, heaved the ball the length of the floor and then sprinted to the locker room — having not taken a single shot.
In 1996 a young writer for The Basketball Times named Dan Wetzel thought it might be neat to move into the life of a star high-school basketball  player and watch up close as big-time basketball colleges recruited him. He picked Shane Battier, and then spent five months trailing him, with growing incredulity. “I’d covered high-school basketball for eight years and talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids — really every single prominent high-school basketball player in the country,” Wetzel says. “There’s this public perception that they’re all thugs. But they aren’t. A lot of them are really good guys, and some of them are very, very bright. Kobe’s very bright. LeBron’s very bright. But there’s absolutely never been anything like Shane Battier.”
Wetzel watched this kid, inundated with offers of every kind, take charge of an unprincipled process. Battier narrowed his choices to six schools — Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, Michigan and Michigan State — and told everyone else, politely, to leave him be. He then set out to minimize the degree to which the chosen schools could interfere with his studies; he had a 3.96 G.P.A. and was poised to claim Detroit Country Day School’s headmaster’s cup for best all-around student. He granted each head coach a weekly 15-minute window in which to phone him. These men happened to be among the most famous basketball coaches in the world and the most persistent recruiters, but Battier granted no exceptions. When the Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, who had just won a national championship, tried to call Battier outside his assigned time, Battier simply removed Kentucky from his list. “What 17-year-old has the stones to do that?” Wetzel asks. “To just cut off Rick Pitino because he calls outside his window?” Wetzel answers his own question: “It wasn’t like, ‘This is a really interesting 17-year-old.’ It was like, ‘This isn’t real.’ ”
Battier, even as a teenager, was as shrewd as he was disciplined. The minute he figured out where he was headed, he called a sensational high-school power forward in Peekskill, N.Y., named Elton Brand — and talked him into joining him at Duke. (Brand now plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.) “I thought he’d be the first black president,” Wetzel says. “He was Barack Obama before Barack Obama.”
Last July, as we sat in the library of the Detroit Country Day School, watching, or trying to watch, his March 2008 performance against Kobe Bryant, Battier was much happier instead talking about Obama, both of whose books he had read. (“The first was better than the second,” he said.) He said he hated watching himself play, then proved it by refusing to watch himself play. My every attempt to draw his attention to the action on the video monitor was met by some distraction.
I pointed to his footwork; he pointed to a gorgeous young woman in the stands wearing a  Battier jersey. (“You don’t see too many good-looking girls with Battier jerseys on,” he said. “It’s usually 12 and under or 60 and over. That’s my demographic.”) I noted the uncanny way in which he got his hand right in front of Bryant’s eyes before a shot; he motioned to his old high school library (“I came in here every day before classes”). He took my excessive interest in this one game as proof of a certain lack of imagination, I’m pretty sure. “I’ve been doing the same thing for seven years,” he said, “and this is the only game anyone wants to talk about. It’s like, Oh, you can play defense?” It grew clear that one reason he didn’t particularly care to watch himself play, apart from the tedium of it, was that he plays the game so self-consciously. Unable to count on the game to properly measure his performance, he learned to do so himself. He had, in some sense, already seen the video. When I finally compelled him to watch, he was knocking the ball out of Bryant’s hands as Bryant raised it from his waist to his chin. “If I get to be commissioner, that will count as a blocked shot,” Battier said. “But it’s nothing. They don’t count it as a blocked shot. I do that at least 30 times a season.”
In the statistically insignificant sample of professional athletes I’ve come to know a bit, two patterns have emerged. The first is, they tell you meaningful things only when you talk to them in places other than where they have been trained to answer questions. It’s pointless, for instance, to ask a basketball player about himself inside his locker room. For a start, he is naked; for another, he’s surrounded by the people he has learned to mistrust, his own teammates. The second pattern is the fact that seemingly trivial events in their childhoods have had huge influence on their careers. A cleanup hitter lives and dies by a swing he perfected when he was 7; a quarterback has a hitch in his throwing motion because he imitated his father. Here, in the Detroit Country Day School library, a few yards from the gym, Battier was back where he became a basketball player. And he was far less interested in what happened between him and Kobe Bryant four months ago than what happened when he was 12.
When he entered Detroit Country Day in seventh grade, he was already conspicuous at 6-foot-4, and a year later he would be 6-foot-7. “Growing up tall was something I got used to,” he said. “I was the kid about whom they always said, ‘Check his birth certificate.’ ” He was also the only kid in school with a black father and a white mother. Oddly enough, the school had just graduated a famous black basketball player, Chris Webber. Webber won three state championships and was named national high-school player of the year. “Chris was a man-child,” says his high school basketball coach, Kurt Keener. “Everyone wanted Shane to be the next Chris Webber, but Shane wasn’t like that.” Battier had never heard of Webber and didn’t understand why, when he took to the Amateur Athletic Union circuit and played with black inner-city kids, he found himself compared unfavorably with Webber: “I kept hearing ‘He’s too soft’ or ‘He’s not an athlete.’ ” His high-school coach was aware of the problems he had when he moved from white high-school games to the black A.A.U. circuit. “I remember trying to add some flair to his game,” Keener says, “but it was like teaching a classical dancer to do hip-hop. I came to the conclusion he didn’t have the ego for it.”
Battier was half-white and half-black, but basketball, it seemed, was either black or white. A small library of Ph.D. theses might usefully be devoted to the reasons for this. For instance, is it a coincidence that many of the things a player does in white basketball to prove his character — take a charge, scramble for a loose ball — are more pleasantly done on a polished wooden floor than they are on inner-city asphalt? Is it easier to “play for the team” when that team is part of some larger institution? At any rate, the inner-city kids with whom he played on the A.A.U. circuit treated Battier like a suburban kid with a white game, and the suburban kids he played with during the regular season treated him like a visitor from the planet where they kept the black people. “On Martin Luther King Day, everyone in class would look at me like I was supposed to know who he was and why he was important,” Battier said. “When we had an official school picture, every other kid was given a comb. I was the only one given a pick.” He was awkward and shy, or as he put it: “I didn’t present well. But I’m in the eighth grade! I’m just trying to fit in!” And yet here he was shuttling between a black world that treated him as white and a white world that treated him as black. ‘‘Everything I’ve done since then is because of what I went through with this,” he said. “What I did is alienate myself from everybody. I’d eat lunch by myself. I’d study by myself. And I sort of lost myself in the game.”
Losing himself in the game meant fitting into the game, and fitting into the game meant meshing so well that he became hard to see. In high school he was almost always the best player on the court, but even then he didn’t embrace the starring role. “He had a tendency to defer,” Keener says. “He had this incredible ability to make everyone around him better. But I had to tell him to be more assertive. The one game we lost his freshman year, it was because he deferred to the seniors.” Even when he was clearly the best player and could have shot the ball at will, he was more interested in his role in the larger unit. But it is a mistake to see in his detachment from self an absence of ego, or ambition, or even desire for attention. When Battier finished telling me the story of this unpleasant period in his life, he said: “Chris Webber won three state championships, the Mr. Basketball Award and the Naismith Award. I won three state championships, Mr. Basketball and the Naismith Awards. All the things they said I wasn’t able to do, when I was in the eighth grade.”
“Who’s they?” I asked.
“Pretty much everyone,” he said.
“White people?”
“No,” he said. “The street.”
As the third quarter began, Battier’s face appeared overhead, on the Jumbotron, where he hammed it up and exhorted the crowd. Throughout the game he was up on the thing more than any other player: plugging teeth-whitening formulas, praising local jewelers, making public-service announcements, telling the fans to make noise. When I mentioned to a Rockets’ staff member that Battier seemed to have far more than his fair share of big-screen appearances, he said, “Probably because he’s the only one who’ll do them.”
I spent the second half with Sam Hinkie, the vice president of basketball operations and the head of basketball analytics in the Rockets’ front office. The game went back and forth. Bryant kept missing more shots than he made. Neither team got much of a lead. More remarkable than the game were Hinkie’s reactions — and it soon became clear that while he obviously wanted the Rockets to win, he was responding to different events on the court than the typical Rockets (or N.B.A.) fan was.
“I care a lot more about what ought to have happened than what actually happens,” said Hinkie, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford. The routine N.B.A. game, he explained, is decided by a tiny percentage of the total points scored. A team scores on average about 100 points a game, but two out of three N.B.A. games are decided by fewer than 6 points — two or three possessions. The effect of this, in his mind, was to raise significantly the importance of every little thing that happened. The Lakers’ Trevor Ariza, who makes 29 percent of his 3-point shots, hit a crazy 3-pointer, and as the crowd moaned, Hinkie was almost distraught. “That Ariza shot, that is really painful,” he said. “Because it’s a near-random event. And it’s a 3-point swing.” When Bryant drove to the basket, instead of being forced to take a jump shot, he said: “That’s three-eighths of a point. These things accumulate.”
In this probabilistic spirit we watched the battle between Battier and Bryant. From Hinkie’s standpoint, it was going extremely well: “With most guys, Shane can kick them from their good zone to bad zone, but with Kobe you’re just picking your poison. It’s the epitome of, Which way do you want to die?” Only the Rockets weren’t dying. Battier had once again turned Bryant into a less-efficient machine of death. Even when the shots dropped, they came from the places on the court where the Rockets’ front office didn’t mind seeing them drop. “That’s all you can do,” Hinkie said, after Bryant sank an 18-footer. “Get him to an inefficient spot and contest.” And then all of a sudden it was 97-95, Lakers, with a bit more than three minutes to play, and someone called timeout. “We’re in it,” Hinkie said, happily. “And some of what happens from here on will be randomness.”
The team with the N.B.A.’s best record was being taken to the wire by Yao Ming and a collection of widely unesteemed players. Moments later, I looked up at the scoreboard:
Bryant: 30.
Battier: 0.
Hinkie followed my gaze and smiled. “I know that doesn’t look good,” he said, referring to the players’ respective point totals. But if Battier wasn’t in there, he went on to say: “we lose by 12. No matter what happens now, none of our coaches will say, ‘If only we could have gotten a little more out of Battier.’ ”
One statistical rule of thumb in basketball is that a team leading by more points than there are minutes left near the end of the game has an 80 percent chance of winning. If your team is down by more than 6 points halfway through the final quarter, and you’re anxious to beat the traffic, you can leave knowing that there is slightly less than a 20 percent chance you’ll miss a victory; on the other hand, if you miss a victory, it will have been an improbable and therefore sensational one. At no point on this night has either team had enough of a lead to set fans, or even Rockets management, to calculating their confidence intervals — but then, with 2:27 to play, the Lakers went up by 4: 99-95. Then they got the ball back. The ball went to Bryant, and Battier shaded him left — into Yao Ming. Bryant dribbled and took the best shot he could, from Battier’s perspective: a long 2-point jump shot, off the dribble, while moving left. He missed, the Rockets ran back the other way, Rafer Alston drove the lane and hit a floater: 99-97, and 1:13 on the clock. The Lakers missed another shot. Alston grabbed the rebound and called timeout with 59 seconds left.
Whatever the Rockets planned went  instantly wrong, when the inbound pass, as soon as it was caught by the Rockets’ Carl Landry, was swatted away by the Lakers. The ball was loose, bodies flew everywhere.
55 . . . 54 . . . 53 . . .
On the side of the court opposite the melee, Battier froze. The moment he saw that the loose ball was likely to be secured by a teammate — but before it was secured — he sprinted to the corner.
50 . . . 49 . . . 48 . . .
The 3-point shot from the corner is the single most efficient shot in the N.B.A. One way the Rockets can tell if their opponents have taken to analyzing basketball in similar ways as they do is their attitude to the corner 3: the smart teams take a lot of them and seek to prevent their opponents from taking them. In basketball there is only so much you can plan, however, especially at a street-ball moment like this. As it happened, Houston’s Rafer Alston was among the most legendary street-ball players of all time — known as Skip 2 My Lou, a nickname he received after a single spectacular move at Rucker Park, in Harlem. “Shane wouldn’t last in street ball because in street ball no one wants to see” his game, Alston told me earlier. “You better give us something to ooh and ahh about. No one cares about someone who took a charge.”
The Rockets’ offense had broken down, and there was no usual place for Alston, still back near the half-court line, to go with the ball. The Lakers’ defense had also broken down; no player was where he was meant to be. The only person exactly where he should have been — wide open, standing at the most efficient spot on the floor from which to shoot — was Shane Battier. When Daryl Morey spoke of basketball intelligence, a phrase slipped out: “the I.Q. of where to be.” Fitting in on a basketball court, in the way Battier fits in, requires the I.Q. of where to be. Bang: Alston hit Battier with a long pass. Bang: Battier shot the 3, guiltlessly. Nothing but net.
Rockets 100, Lakers 99.
43 . . . 42 . . . 41 . . .
At this moment, the Rockets’ front office would later calculate, the team’s chances of winning rose from 19.2 percent to 72.6 percent. One day some smart person will study the correlation between shifts in probabilities and levels of noise, but for now the crowd was ignorantly berserk: it sounded indeed like the largest crowd in the history of Houston’s Toyota Center. Bryant got the ball at half-court and dribbled idly, searching for his opening. This was his moment, the one great players are said to live for, when everyone knows he’s going to take the shot, and he takes it anyway. On the other end of the floor it wasn’t the shooter who mattered but the shot. Now the shot was nothing, the shooter everything.
33 . . . 32 . . . 31 . . .
Bryant — 12 for 31 on the night — took off and drove to the right, his strength, in the middle of the lane. Battier cut him off. Bryant tossed the ball back out to Derek Fisher, out of shooting range.
30 . . . 29 . . .
Like everyone else in the place, Battier assumed that the game was still in Bryant’s hands. If he gave the ball up, it was only so that he might get it back. Bryant popped out. He was now a good four feet beyond the 3-point line, or nearly 30 feet from the basket.
28 . . .
Bryant caught the ball and, 27.4 feet from the basket, the Rockets’ front office would later determine, leapt. Instantly his view of that basket was blocked by Battier’s hand. This was not an original situation. Since the 2002-3 season, Bryant had taken 51 3-pointers at the very end of close games from farther than 26.75 feet from the basket. He had missed 86.3 percent of them. A little over a year ago the Lakers lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers after Bryant missed a 3 from 28.4 feet. Three nights from now the Lakers would lose to the Orlando Magic after Bryant missed a shot from 27.5 feet that would have tied the game. It was a shot Battier could live with, even if it turned out to be good.
Battier looked back to see the ball drop through the basket and hit the floor. In that brief moment he was the picture of detachment, less a party to a traffic accident than a curious passer-by. And then he laughed. The process had gone just as he hoped. The outcome he never could control.
Michael Lewis is the author of “Moneyball” and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. His next book, “Home Game,” a memoir about fatherhood, will be published in June.

bitbull

支持一下

ngts

He is the real man in Rockets, supporting

丨山鸡灬＂

遮掩防守，不失为一种很好的防守方式！！！