PSU STAT 497 - Shane Battier (18 pages)

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The No Stats All Star NYTimes com Page 1 of 18 February 15 2009 The No Stats All Star By MICHAEL LEWIS Out of Duke University A 6 foot 8 inch forward 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