Shane Battier was one of the better defenders in the NBA during his 13 seasons as a pro, and much of his success was a result of research and preparation. But when it came to guarding Carmelo Anthony, Battier says there wasn’t all that much to prepare for.
Battier, who spent his last three seasons with the Miami Heat, had plenty of success slowing down ‘Melo. The reason? Anthony was predictable.
“I had some success against him,” Battier recently told Brett Pollakoff of Pro Basketball Talk. “The numbers really play out with him, and as he’s gotten older, he has not been about reinvention. The last two years I played him, he did exactly what the scouting report said he was going to do, every single time.
“A lot of players will deviate — Kobe was so tough in his prime, or Durant or LeBron. But Carmelo, I knew what he was doing. He was on the left block, he’s going to dip his right shoulder and go to his left hand every single time — he travels every time, by the way; he travels every single time. But if I made him use his right hand and go over his left shoulder, he didn’t want to do that. And as a result, I was able to drain his efficiency.”
As Pollakoff notes, Anthony once dropped 50 points against Battier’s Heat in 2013. Carmelo is a great scorer, so there are plenty of times when a defender knows what’s coming and still can’t stop it. Still, Battier felt that Anthony’s 50-point performance was an anomaly.
“The only time he got me was, he had the most unbelievable game,” he said. “This was like, the outlier of all outliers in terms of the numbers and analytics. He scored 50 points, and didn’t have one paint point. So, yeah. I was really feeling good about ‘any long non-paint two is a good shot’ after that game, right? He scored 50 points on me, zero paint points.”
For what it’s worth, there are future Hall of Famers who regard Anthony as the most difficult player in the NBA to defend. Perhaps those perennial All-Stars need to seek some advice from Battier.
