We at The Millions are fans of great sports journalism and of Michael Lewis, so recommending Lewis’ New York Times Magazine feature on Houston Rockets forward Shane Battier is a no-brainer. The hook:
Here we have a basketball mystery: a player is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.
Lewis goes on to make the (slightly Gladwellian) case for a new statistical approach to basketball. Nonetheless, his piece implicitly underscores what we’ve suspected all along… nothing captures “the intangibles” like good writing.