There are plenty of stat nerds littering NBA front-offices, but it’s not often that players admit to keeping up with advanced statistics.

The now-retired Shane Battier is different, of course.

Battier — who obsessively studied Kobe Bryant prior to each of their (mostly one-sided) battles throughout a stellar 13-year career — says he owes much of his success to the careful scrutiny of opponents’ tendencies, and closely examining the numbers.