PDA

View Full Version : Shane Battier's NBA Finals Records



Greg_Newton
06-22-2012, 12:24 AM
If my calculations are correct, by shooting 15-26 (http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/976/shane-battier) (57.7%) from three in the series, Shane Battier has set the following NBA finals records (http://statsontapp.com/2012/06/18/nba-finals-shane-battier-supports-miamis-big-three-with-big-threes/):

-Best 3PT% ever for a player who made 15 or more 3-pointers in the NBA Finals.
-Most 3-pointers ever for a team who won the NBA Finals in 5 games or less.
-Second most 3-pointers ever in any 5-game NBA finals series (Rashard Lewis went 16-40 (40%) in 2009).

Here's where he should stack up on the all-time lists:


All-time NBA Finals 3PT Made

1st: 22, Ray Allen, 2008
2nd (t): 17, Derek Harper, 1994; Dan Majerle, 1993
4th (t): 16, John Starks, 1994; Rashard Lewis, 2009
6th (t): 15, Shane Battier, 2012; Kobe Bryant, 2010; Reggie Miller, 2000; Robert Horry, 2005; Bryon Russell, 1997


All-time NBA Finals 3PT%*

1st: .688 Isiah Thomas, 1990 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/t/thomais01/gamelog/1990/)
2nd: .632 Glen Rice, 2000 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/ricegl01/gamelog/2000/)
3rd: .609 Michael Cooper, 1987 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/coopemi01/gamelog/1987/)
4th: .577 Shane Battier, 2012

Someone might want to doublecheck my numbers, but based on the link, I believe they're correct. Congrats, Shane!

*minimum 11 3PT made to qualify
(credit to statsontapp.com (http://statsontapp.com/2012/06/18/nba-finals-shane-battier-supports-miamis-big-three-with-big-threes/) for the original leaderboards)

Starter
06-22-2012, 01:41 AM
Man, if Starks could have just hit one more...

Listen to Quants
06-22-2012, 04:49 PM
Way cool for a guy out there to play exceptional defense. And exceptional defense he did play. I essentially only watched Battier and wow, precision alignment for help possibilities, block-out superb, timing on the charges taken (including the two(?) borderline calls which he might have gotten jobbed on), etc. etc. etc. an old man, battling much bigger people or demi-gods (Durant) and holding his own+ What a series he played. Excellent as it was, to my mind the offense was the least of it. To bad there are no good and well know defensive numbers for the talkers to babble about. MVP, MVP (well, except maybe for that James kid).

NovaScotian
06-23-2012, 02:08 PM
Man, if Starks could have just hit one more...

Gahhh, don't remind me.

slower
06-23-2012, 03:11 PM
If my calculations are correct, by shooting 15-26 (http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/976/shane-battier) (57.7%) from three in the series, Shane Battier has set the following NBA finals records (http://statsontapp.com/2012/06/18/nba-finals-shane-battier-supports-miamis-big-three-with-big-threes/):

-Best 3PT% ever for a player who made 15 or more 3-pointers in the NBA Finals.
-Most 3-pointers ever for a team who won the NBA Finals in 5 games or less.
-Second most 3-pointers ever in any 5-game NBA finals series (Rashard Lewis went 16-40 (40%) in 2009).

Here's where he should stack up on the all-time lists:





Someone might want to doublecheck my numbers, but based on the link, I believe they're correct. Congrats, Shane!

*minimum 11 3PT made to qualify
(credit to statsontapp.com (http://statsontapp.com/2012/06/18/nba-finals-shane-battier-supports-miamis-big-three-with-big-threes/) for the original leaderboards)

These stats are nice and everything, but verging on the silly side ("the best percentage for over 15 shots in a 5-game series", yada yada). Give Shane his due, yes. But I suspect he would find these to be somewhat trivial and meaningless stats and "records."

Sorry, this isn't meant to rag on the original poster. There's just WAY too much hype going around in these parts to the effect that the Heat "couldn't have done it without Shane." Now, this may or may not be true. It's obviously one of the hot memes of the moment. The play of Lebron James was, obviously, factor #1. Wade had a decent series as the #2 guy. I'd put the play of Bosh as more significant than Shane's "difference-making." So, I'm not meaning to minimize Shane's contribution - just hoping that folks will get a bit of proper perspective.

SupaDave
06-23-2012, 03:24 PM
These stats are nice and everything, but verging on the silly side ("the best percentage for over 15 shots in a 5-game series", yada yada). Give Shane his due, yes. But I suspect he would find these to be somewhat trivial and meaningless stats and "records."

Sorry, this isn't meant to rag on the original poster. There's just WAY too much hype going around in these parts to the effect that the Heat "couldn't have done it without Shane." Now, this may or may not be true. It's obviously one of the hot memes of the moment. The play of Lebron James was, obviously, factor #1. Wade had a decent series as the #2 guy. I'd put the play of Bosh as more significant than Shane's "difference-making." So, I'm not meaning to minimize Shane's contribution - just hoping that folks will get a bit of proper perspective.

Well you rained on the parade but other than a different back-up point guard, what was different on this team from last year?

slower
06-23-2012, 03:27 PM
Well you rained on the parade but other than a different back-up point guard, what was different on this team from last year?

Probably the low-fat, whole-grain cereal they ate for breakfast.

Look, I'm not saying Shane didn't make a significant contribution. I've just seen so much cyber-ink, some of it over the top (IMO), that I'm a bit fatigued. This is a Duke site, so for any given event, many posters here will look only or primarily at the Duke connection. Sometimes it works and sometimes it seems a bit forced.

dukelifer
06-23-2012, 03:54 PM
Probably the low-fat, whole-grain cereal they ate for breakfast.

Look, I'm not saying Shane didn't make a significant contribution. I've just seen so much cyber-ink, some of it over the top (IMO), that I'm a bit fatigued. This is a Duke site, so for any given event, many posters here will look only or primarily at the Duke connection. Sometimes it works and sometimes it seems a bit forced.

I think the point is that you don't win championships unless the role guys step up- and if possible throughout a series. We will likely agree that Dexter Pittman, Juwan Howard, Eddie Curry, Terrel Harris and Ronny Turiaf made no contribution to this championship and would likely not have made one even if forced to play. Of the non-big three who got some playing time - Shane Battier, Mike Miller, Mario Chalmers, Joel Anthony, Norris Cole, Udonis Haslem and James Jones, Battier was probably the most important and consistent player on both sides of the court. My sense is that if Battier did not play, his minutes would have fallen to Haslem and Miller. Now the question is whether a Battier-less Heat would have won with Haslem and Miller. I honestly do not think so. I think you can make an argument that Battier was critical to their winning as he had a great series and made some very important plays at the end of games- but of course we will never know for sure.

sagegrouse
06-23-2012, 04:08 PM
'd put the play of Bosh as more significant than Shane's "difference-making." So, I'm not meaning to minimize Shane's contribution - just hoping that folks will get a bit of proper perspective.

Not to be contentious, but maybe the "proper perspective" on DBR is that Shane's play was critical to the Heat's winning the NBA championship. He scored 41 points in the Heat's wins -- games which it won by a total of 31 points. His offensive contribution was very valuable in games 2 and 3, won by only 4 and 6 points. The tip at the end of game four may have tipped the balance in that game. And his defense and leadership were superb throughout -- remembering, of course, Shane's chat with Chalmers going up the tunnel after game three and before Mario went wild in game four with 25 points.

sagegrouse

Mike Corey
06-23-2012, 04:32 PM
Sorry, this isn't meant to rag on the original poster. There's just WAY too much hype going around in these parts to the effect that the Heat "couldn't have done it without Shane." Now, this may or may not be true. It's obviously one of the hot memes of the moment. The play of Lebron James was, obviously, factor #1. Wade had a decent series as the #2 guy. I'd put the play of Bosh as more significant than Shane's "difference-making." So, I'm not meaning to minimize Shane's contribution - just hoping that folks will get a bit of proper perspective.

But for Shane Battier, the Heat are not world champions. That statement is certainly true of Lebron, who also upped his averages in the Finals.

But consider Battier's improved output: from 4.8 ppg to 11.6 ppg in the Finals. Those few points made a very big difference; did anyone else double their scoring output in the series?

Meanwhile, Mr. Bosh's output decreased from 18 ppg in the regular season to 14.6 ppg in the Finals, a number actually inflated by Bosh's 24-point surge in game five. Otherwise, his average is down to 12.25.

That snapshot is not to indicate that Bosh is the primary reason the Heat were able to win it all--Bosh still scored more than Battier--but it is to show that Battier's scoring contribution, among the many others that don't show up in the box score, was still rather significant. And it can still be significant without outdoing the larger, expected outputs of the Heat's superstars.

Greg_Newton
06-23-2012, 04:38 PM
I wasn't trying to blow Battier's role out of proportion with the OP, just to point out some cool stats and make sure his historic shooting performance - WRT both quantity and accuracy - didn't get lost in the shuffle. Even on its own, the 4th-best 3PT% ever in a finals series is nothing too sneeze at, and I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere. Combined with a top 10 total-threes-made in a finals series (especially considering it only went 5 games), it puts him in pretty rare company overall.

The only other player on the top-10 total-threes-made list to shoot over 50% was Ray Allen, who made more three at a lower percentage; pretty elite company as an all-around shooter in the Finals, no?

Plus, the "15 threes made" qualification isn't completely arbirtrary; as luck would have it, that's the minimum cutoff to put you in the top 10 in history. So, of everyone on the top 10 total threes list, he was the best percentage shooter.

I would have been thrilled enough for Shane to get a ring by playing defense and scoring 2.3 PPG, and I know 99% of the talk now will be on Lebron, Wade, etc. as Battier quietly gets back to work. I just wanted to give him his credit too, given that it quietly was a historic performance (albeit in a different sense than Lebron's..). Not only will he get his ring, he'll get his name in the record books in a few spots, which I think is awesome.

slower
06-23-2012, 05:40 PM
I wasn't trying to blow Battier's role out of proportion with the OP, just to point out some cool stats and make sure his historic shooting performance - WRT both quantity and accuracy - didn't get lost in the shuffle. Even on its own, the 4th-best 3PT% ever in a finals series is nothing too sneeze at, and I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere. Combined with a top 10 total-threes-made in a finals series (especially considering it only went 5 games), it puts him in pretty rare company overall.

The only other player on the top-10 total-threes-made list to shoot over 50% was Ray Allen, who made more three at a lower percentage; pretty elite company as an all-around shooter in the Finals, no?

Plus, the "15 threes made" qualification isn't completely arbirtrary; as luck would have it, that's the minimum cutoff to put you in the top 10 in history. So, of everyone on the top 10 total threes list, he was the best percentage shooter.

I would have been thrilled enough for Shane to get a ring by playing defense and scoring 2.3 PPG, and I know 99% of the talk now will be on Lebron, Wade, etc. as Battier quietly gets back to work. I just wanted to give him his credit too, given that it quietly was a historic performance (albeit in a different sense than Lebron's..). Not only will he get his ring, he'll get his name in the record books in a few spots, which I think is awesome.

Sorry, man, I didn't intend to commit a DBR "Flagrant 2" foul on you. :D

Starter
06-23-2012, 05:55 PM
Battier's best contribution to Miami's title run wasn't statistical. The guy is a winner and a leader regardless of how many points he scores, and something this team sorely needed. Those qualities are what made me believe he was the missing piece when he signed on. (His defense isn't too shabby either.)

Indoor66
06-23-2012, 06:51 PM
Battier's best contribution to Miami's title run wasn't statistical. The guy is a winner and a leader regardless of how many points he scores, and something this team sorely needed. Those qualities are what made me believe he was the missing piece when he signed on. (His defense isn't too shabby either.)

I completely agree with you. Shane brought the intangibles that were missing and kept everyone on the same page. This was the same team as last year with one dramatic change: Shane.

Jim3k
06-23-2012, 08:21 PM
I completely agree with you. Shane brought the intangibles that were missing and kept everyone on the same page. This was the same team as last year with one dramatic change: Shane.

Many of those intangibles were tangible. Spectators could see them or photograph them, but there was no place the stats guys could write them down.

tele
06-23-2012, 11:25 PM
Many of those intangibles were tangible. Spectators could see them or photograph them, but there was no place the stats guys could write them down.

QAR? -Qi Above Replacement

diveonthefloor
06-23-2012, 11:28 PM
Anyone who knows the game well knows that SB31 was indeed a difference maker in the 5 game Finals victory for the Heat. Money well spent by Pat Riley.