Apparently, he's such a good team player (picking good positions, herding opponents into weak positions, doing things which are bad for his stats but good for the team) that he can almost shut down Kobe. OK, Kobe still scores a lot when he's guarded by Battier, but only because Kobe always gets the ball.
He'll memorize every one of those heat maps (along with every other dataset his coach can get him), and use that knowledge to mess up his opponent's attacks.
