I think you and I are closer to agreeing than not. If someone watches Winslow they say "Wow! That guy is a beast! There is none better!!" People tend to forget OR cannot possibly believe that there was someone better then the last guy they just saw.
How can Battier be the better defender, I never saw him? I'm not saying that you said that, but is the general theme.
And if you are correct about the bigger deal of the number of threes then your recall is better than mine.
I can easily get too torqued up about stuff like this.
Yeah I won't speak for anyone, but that 2001 team was just so talented and had a bunch of storylines. You had one of Duke's greatest point guards ever, a swingman in Mike Dunleavy that really brought national attention to Duke's propensity to recruit and develop 6'8 versatile wing players (I know we had Grant and McLeod, but people nationally didn't take notice until Dick Vitale's constant mention of Dunleavy and his versatility), you had the Boozer injury overshadow a lot of things, the Duhon-Williams can they coexist stories, the "Nate James loses his starting spot, will he be mad" angle, who's gonna leave for the draft, "how many threes can this team possibly hit" and all of this on top of Duke winning game after game. Battier's defense was almost an afterthought simply because it wasn't new what he did. It didn't grab headlines and it wasn't a part of the daily news. And he was so likable that people tried to hate him, but just couldn't. Now he did get some SI covers and such, but once the season was in full swing some of the other things took precedent.
Even during some telecasts announcers like Brent Musberger, Jim Nantz and Mike Patrick called games as if they were surprised by what Shane was doing. I will say this, as annoying as they can be, Billy Packer and Dick Vitale pretty much did their part to let the nation know how incredible Shane was, especially on defense, but their credibility is overshadowed by their personas so people were definitely taking a "let me see for myself" stance.
Battier honestly didn't seem to get much national respect until the article came out in '08 or '09 about the Rockets trading for him using the Moneyball, saber metrics tactic. At that point the world knew what we as Duke fans already knew about Shane Battier.
So my belabored point was not to say no one cares about Shane. It was more of an education for younger fans or fans that only remember the past few years because the mid-2000's weren't necessarily the typical postseason Duke we know and love and sometimes the contributions of individuals are lost.
Sorry for the hijack.