Blue Devil Weekly Feature: Q & A With Shane Battier

He's appeared on the cover of nearly every basketball preview magazine this season, including Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News.

He's been the subject of a cover story in USA Today - not on the sports pages but in the news section. A camera crew and reporter recently visited him from Los Angeles to prepare a five-minute feature for Keith Olberman's Sunday show on Fox Sports. In short, Duke basketball captain Shane Battier has become one of the most sought-after interviews in college athletics - and, fortunately, he always has something to say. Hardly a day goes by when Battier doesn't stop by Duke's sports information office to check on his interview schedule. The religion major and two-time national defensive player of the year talked about his celebrity and publicity as he was finishing up his penultimate semester at Duke.

"When I came back for my senior year, Coach told me that there would be a lot of focus on me as a player, but I never would have thought it would have been this much of a media cyclone, although it's something you dream about. When I was seven or eight years old in the driveway playing basketball with gloves on up on Michigan, my winter hat on, playing Isaiah Thomas one-on one, hitting the winning shot, giving postgame interview to a thousand media people after the game, it's something you dream about every day. To be on the cover of Sports Illustrated is a dream come true. Not many people get that opportunity."

BDW: Have you enjoyed it? Even though you say it's something you've looked forward to all your life, can you say you've enjoyed what's happened to you leading into the season?

Battier: "I try to enjoy it. Where I have to catch myself is that I have to try to keep living up to my own expectations. I've had to block out other people's expectations. All of a sudden, when you have a bunch of publicity, other people start shaping their expectations for you. If you start to live for those, you're not being yourself, not the same person or basketball player. What I try to do is stay the same person that I am and do whatever I can on the basketball court to help win games. When I do that, it's very enjoyable."

BDW: Speaking of outside expectations, are there some you continually have to guard against or that you hear the most? Battier: "I think a common thread in expectations people have of me is to be perfect. A lot has been said about 'this guy is too good to be true.'

I'm a 22-year-old young man, and I'm still going to make mistakes. I'm still going to be cranky some days. I don't have to be perfect, and I know that. With all the publicity surrounding me this year, people tend to put me on a certain pedestal; and although that's somewhat justified, I don't feel the pressure necessarily to be perfect in every little thing I do."

BDW: So far this season, you've had some great games and you've had some games when you haven't shot the ball well. How has that affected the pressure to be perfect and your expectations for yourself?

Battier: "People say a lot about missing shots or making shots or how many points you score. I consider myself to have a great game if I do things to help my team win. That doesn't necessarily always mean making or missing shots. If I play great defense and rebound, I know I'm helping my team win ball games. That's the bottom line.

"There are some games where you just have off nights. Even the great ones have off shooting nights. I think I've had a couple of those. I've stuck to my guns and my fundamentals. As long as I believe in myself and my fundamentals, then everything is going to work out. Basketball is definitely a game of ebb and flow. You can have ups and you can have downs. The key is to stay at a medium when things are going great or not so great. Fortunately, I've been able to have some off games by my standards, and we're still 9-0 right now."

BDW: Your leadership on the court is very evident. Every year it seems like you've taken on more and more responsibilities on the court. Battier: "I've played in 114 or 115 games right now in my college career and I've pretty much been in every situation that you could write up. I feel that if we're in a situation that everyone else is unfamiliar with, I need to step up and provide that leadership. Along with Nate James, we're going to be on these guys to perform at a high level because we're still a very young team. Even though we have very talented players, we still have guys trying to find out who they are. If we lead with the knowledge that we've gained over the years, we'll be that much better of a team."

BDW: How about your leadership role within the Student Basketball Council, in trying to make sure the voice of the student-athlete is heard by the NCAA? How is that going for you?

Battier: "It's been very educational. Being a college student, being 22 years old, I think I'm a fairly liberal thinker. It's been interesting to lead a liberal-thinking group going against a very conservative group in the NCAA, although I do think we have been fairly well-received by the media, by the fans, by the the players, by the coaches, by the NCAA. My main focus as a leader is to bring thinking that's outside the box of the status quo, and I think there are people out there in college basketball in the NCAA who, once those creative juices are stirred, can come up with some new and original thinking about how to make this game better. College basketball is the best game out there today. It's unfortunate that a lot of problems have seeped into the cracks and cast a blemish over such a great thing."

BDW: Going into the Temple game last week, you were 6-0 but felt like you hadn't played your game yet. How do you define that game, and how could you sustain that level throughout the year?

Battier: "Every game that we play, we try to impose our collective will. By that, we want to control every facet of the game. That's what it means to play Duke basketball. We want to play tight pressure defense and make the other team run their offense from 25 feet. We want to push the ball up the court and make the other team play defense on their heels. We want to control the boards so the other team has no advantage and we control all facets of the game. Once we do that, we'll be a very tough team. We're still trying to figure out our identity in that and how to perform it on a game-to-game basis."

BDW: With all the attention you are getting from the media, are you sick of doing interviews yet?

Battier: "I am truly my mother's son. If you've met my mother, you know what I'm talking about. I don't think I can run out of words. If every news station sent a truck to this campus and I was forced to do interviews, I may use a cliche or two - which is against my goal for the year - but I think I have enough words to fill them up. At 22 years old, I'm young and life is really good for me now, so I have no reason to complain or be sick of anything."

Blue Devil Weekly Feature: Q & A With Shane Battier

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