Can someone who has watched Shane throughout his career, give a little more extensive breakdown of his offensive game. I do think we need a 3rd creator? Can he do that. Seeing his numbers, I project him to be about 14 ppg 5 rb 3 assists 1 and 1 maybe for this year. I think he will shoot more treys and probably shoot lower than in the past (VG-itis maybe 38%) But admittedly, have not seen a ton of him. Can he create? Put the ball on the floor for a few dribbles? Penetrate? Post up? Pass into the post? Screen? Shoot with a hand in his face? P.S. While I would love to hear from you MemphisX, you may still be a bit high off the rape fumes as I would just rather hear some optimism.
I saw some clips of him on mysynergysports before their trial ran out. His scoring game is basically spot up shooting and a bit of posting up. They didn't run him through any screens in memphis, so I can't really tell if he can shoot off either shoulder, but my guess is no. In the low post he's got a semi-effective hook shot with either hand, which was a bit surprising, but he only posts up about once a game by my estimates. I guess they just never run stuff for him. As for all that other stuff (i.e. setting screens, entry passes etc) he better be able to do that. He's supposed to be a "glue" guy, and that's the kind of stuff that glue guys are supposed to do. So I'll just take everybody's word that he'll be an intangibles guy and try not to dwell on how shortsighted our front office was.
Just for further clarification, they broke down scoring percentage wise. Battier managed just over 20% of his points on post-ups and around 30% on spot up jumpers. All of the other categories - things like backdoor cuts and drives to the basket - were at or under 10%. In the two games I watched end to end he had He has a somewhat long setup on his jumper, which is closer to a set shot, so I wouldn't look for him to create anything on his own. Because of Memphis' offense, he seemed to do almost all of his deep shooting from the baseline.
Battier's best offensive weapon might be his 6'8" height, and intelligence, which will allow him to be a VERY GOOD post entry passer to Yao (Think Horry to Hakeem). And then be there on the outside if double teams come for sticking the jumper. Basically augmenting Yao's game.
