A recent New York Times Magazine article attempts to quantify basketball’s intangibles – the little things that cannot be seen in a boxscore and give some respect to the blue collar role players in the NBA.

The piece focuses on a Shane Battier, seen as an unspectacular NBA player by both players and fans alike, but despite his reputation Battier has brought success to every team he has been on, even moreso than some bigger name superstars.

And the article takes it even deeper, by questioning our perceptions of some well-known NBA players and giving us some insight as to what NBA scouting reports look like.

For example, the following paragraph that compares the offensive efficiency of Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Stephen Jackson and Manu Ginobili:

“…people often say that Kobe Bryant has no weaknesses to his game, but that’s not really true. Before the game, Battier was given his special package of information. ‘He’s the only player we give it to,’ Morey says…

The data essentially broke down the floor into many discrete zones and calculated the odds of Bryant making shots from different places on the court, under different degrees of defensive pressure, in different relationships to other players — how well he scored off screens, off pick-and-rolls, off catch-and-shoots and so on.  Battier learns a lot from studying the data on the superstars he is usually assigned to guard.

For instance, the numbers show him that Allen Iverson is one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A. when he goes to his right; when he goes to his left he kills his team.

The Golden State Warriors forward Stephen Jackson is an even stranger case. ‘Steve Jackson,’ Battier says, ‘is statistically better going to his right, but he loves to go to his left — and goes to his left almost twice as often.’

The San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginóbili is a statistical freak: he has no imbalance whatsoever in his game — there is no one way to play him that is better than another. He is equally efficient both off the dribble and off the pass, going left and right and from any spot on the floor.

Perhaps this is a reason why Ginobili tops the list as the NBA’s best clutch player with less than five minutes in the game beating out the likes of Bryant and Iverson (as well as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Dirk Nowitzki).

Links and Resources: Giving intangibles their just due (Interbasket), Shane Battier: The No-Stats All-Star (The New York Times), Five Minutes Left… NBA’s Best Clutch Players (Interbasket)