Battier talks in-depth about how analytics helped him play Kobe

The analytics crowd sees the lazy person's Charles Barkley and raises them a Shane Battier.

It is a widely held belief that defensive capabilities extended Battier's NBA playing career. He was one of a handful of players over the years to land the inappropriate nickname "Kobe Stopper" for his success at different times in slowing Kobe Bryant down. 

Now a commentator for ESPN, Battier released a video he produced for Big Think, an online forum, on Wednesday.

"I was lucky to grow up in the golden age of analytics as it pertains to basketball and the emergence of big data in sports," Battier said. "The way I look at it, it's just another way – like honing your jump shot or honing your jump hook or getting faster or stronger – to gain a competitive advantage on the basketball court."

He goes on to explain quite simply that guarding Bryant was based on forcing him to take left-handed shots, something that reduced the Los Angeles Lakers' points-per-possession average.

"Every time that he went left and shot that pull-up jumper, he was generating .88 points per possession," Battier said.

The thing is, nothing Battier says here is really that surprising. Players watch enough video and know opponents well enough that they should know how to get opponents to take lower-percentage shots. Not everyone succeeds in that endeavor, however. The cerebral Duke product played 13 years in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies, Houston Rockets and Miami Heat, retiring last June.