Shane Battier is working his way through China (what NBA player isn’t?) promoting PEAK, his China-based shoe company. With that comes a lot of media stops and pictures and press conferences and the like.
Most of them sound identical after a while, like white noise in the background.
But Battier broke that up at one press conference, telling an interesting story about his last name (via SLAM and The Basketball Jones):“My dad, Eddie Battle, born Eddie Battle, on his birth certificate, whoever wrote it down wrote B-A-T-T-scribble-scribble-scribble. So my dad grew up Eddie Battle his entire life, and then he joined the army when he was of age, the army recruiter actually had his own interpretation of what was on the birth certificate. They wrote down B-A-T-T-I-E-R.
So the first day in the army, my dad says ‘Private Battle reporting for duty.’ The sergeant said, ‘There’s no Battle, there’s a Battier (ed. note: pronounced ‘batty-er’).’ So my dad says, ‘That’s not my name.’ The sergeant says, ‘Well Uncle Sam says it is.’ So my dad kept it.
So he was Eddie Battier (still ‘batty-er’), and he met his wife, my mom, in ’75 and she said, ‘It looks French. We’ll call it French.’ So from that point on they were Battier (bat-ee-ay). So I’m a first generation Battier.”
Is there any chance we are not calling him “Battle” next season? Nope.
That is just an awesome story.