As basketball fans, we delight in watching the best athletes in the world accomplish extraordinary things on the court. For every Michael Jordan dagger, though, there’s a Craig Ehlo or a Bryon Russell on the other end. Forget hunting people, having to guard the game’s premier scorers is the most dangerous game, because there’s a chance that you could live forever on the wrong end of a highlight or poster.
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Shane Battier was one of the NBA’s best defenders during his 13 years in the league, and on a recent episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, he described how, despite being an accomplished pro, there was a certain level of fear that took hold whenever he was matched up with someone like Kevin Durant or Carmelo Anthony.
Battier would always be guarding the league’s best players, a tall task for anyone, but his intelligence allowed him to be a quality role player wherever he went. He won two titles with the Heatles era Miami Heat. It was his responsibility to take on those challenges.
Kobe Bryant, in particular, was a nightmare that drove Battier to work harder than he ever had before. “Guarding Kobe Bryant is f****** scary,” Battier said. “I will never forget the feeling of getting on the bus [on the way to the Staples Center to face Kobe], and I’m just thinking to myself, ‘S***, this guy’s trying to embarrass me… He wants to score 80 points on me tonight.'”
Battier was known as a “Kobe stopper” during his career for the way he pestered the Lakers legend whenever the two met on the court. He famously used to contest Kobe’s shot not by attempting to block the ball, but by putting his hand in Kobe’s face to obscure his vision.
That anxiety pushed Battier in new ways. “I call it productive paranoia,” Battier explained. “Instead of being paralyzing, I use that to be like, man, I better know everything about Kobe that there is to know about him. And so I threw myself into the data analytics and just learned Kobe better than Kobe knew himself.”
This matchup went well beyond one guy trying to stop another, though. Kobe averaged 28.6 points per game against Battier in his career, which is better than the 25.0 he averaged otherwise. How can that be if Battier was a Kobe stopper?
The answer boils down to Kobe’s approach. He knew that Battier worked tirelessly to be able to stop him, and as he said in his book, because Battier downplayed his own ability in the matchup, it made Kobe want to destroy him and his “false humility” even more.
In essence, by putting Kobe on such a pedestal, Battier created a self-fulfilling prophecy that Kobe would play his best against him. Even though he tried every trick he had, Kobe still lit him up for better than his career scoring average. It’s the basketball version of the Streisand Effect.
Battier once said, “For Kobe, that was the game within the game within the game that we played against each other. It was like a meta game that no one else knew we were playing. This mind game that he knew I was downplaying everything and I knew that he had no weakness. I never had that with anybody in basketball.”
There’s nothing better than watching a gifted offensive player go toe-to-toe with a premier defender. Kobe and Battier are a great example. More recently, we’ve gotten to watch Kevin Durant vs. Tony Allen and LeBron James vs. Draymond Green. These matchups evolved throughout each player’s career, with neither side willing to concede an inch. That’s the good stuff.
