Shane Battier is rewarded for his beer plug with a truck full of Bud Light cases (Vid

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The Miami Heat have made a sound choice in keeping the team’s 2012-13 focus on the month of June, instead of stressing over the eight NBA months that come before it. From the slowish start to the season to the perfect perspective in the midst of the team’s 27-game winning streak to the rest for its superstars late in the regular season to the professional way they’re downing the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, the Heat are showing the sort of character needed to be at their best in June after a potential 100-plus games of pre-Finals ball.

For Shane Battier, his dedication to Bud Light as his after-work adult beverage served two purposes. For one, the low-calorie beer helped keep him in fighting trim. And secondly, because he is a professional athlete, it served as a go-to superstition libation during Miami’s massive streak. Battier admitted as much to NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner last month:

As forward Shane Battier said late Wednesday night in Cleveland, “Athletes are all superstitious and even if they don’t admit it, there’s a routine and just a cadence to our days. Especially when things go well, you can see us try to replicate it.”

Exactly. Just what we suspected. And yours are …

“Nope,” Battier said. “Well, I try to drink the same beer – Bud Light – but that’s about it. You never know. I don’t want to chance luck and switch up brands, so I’m staying loyal to Bud Light.”



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Because the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company is always out to give free stuff to America’s most down-trodden, this is what resulted:



Shane Battier has long been one of my favorite NBA people. So much so that I hope he doesn’t slum as an NBA head coach or GM following the end of his playing career. His big brain, and those 26,400 Bud Lights, are best served in another, perhaps more public, capacity.

And while I’m far from a beer snob – I don’t usually drink beer but when given the chance I’ll go straight for a middle of the road macrobrew, and I love to down my share of Budweisers while off the clock and watching a St. Louis Cardinal game at home – Bud Light seems a little off for our man Shane. Seriously, how many Bud Lights would it take for a 6-8, 220-pound professional athlete to even feel like he’s drank an actual beer?

Come on, Shane. I’ve seen NBA practices, I’ve seen NBA shootarounds, and I’ve seen NBA games. You’re blasting through tens of thousands of calories before I can even make my way down to my local for last call on Saturday. Superstitions are daft, and Bud Light tastes like a shook-up bottle of water that someone dropped some rice into before leaving it in the sun for a few hours.

(Although regular Budweiser is pretty tasty for a guy wearing a hoodie and yelling at a baseball game on TV in his living room, while telling himself that “Budweiser is what Jon Hamm drinks!” over and over again while his wife hides in the bedroom. So I’ve heard, I mean.)

Congrats on the free Bud Light, Shane Battier. We won’t worry about whether or not it will affect your focus in the postseason. Mainly because it’s Bud Light.

(Cheers to Lang Whitaker at NBA.com for sussing this all out for us.)