Can Marvin's body take the pounding inside?

[HAWKEYE]

Can Marvin's body take the pounding inside? The Utah Jazz sent him a message in the Summer League and they are not by any stretch an elite defensive NBA team especially their Summer League team about what awaits "anyone taking it strong to the hole in the NBA" . He was kept out of SL games because of bruised ribs and now the first preseason games he has the recurring bruised ribs. According to reports its the work of Eddie Jones in the Memphis game. No question he has got the mental attitude needed but the body might pose different problems.

[HAWKEYE]

Was it coincidental when defensive players started undercutting Josh Smith on his nasty dunks inside and he did not know how he how he was going to land when he hit the floor(old playground move!) that a perimeter game was born. He would give them a look like "are you trying to hurt me"." Ref isn't that a flagrant foul ".

[Popeye]

Turn to channel 53 Turner South, they will be talking about MArvin shortly.

[thesheedera]

A fair question I think. I believe Marvin has the attitude to play through pain, but he still has a young man's body. He's probably thickened up some, but he needs more if he's gonna be a "take it to the rack" kind of guy in this league.

[DJlaysitup]

One good thing about the "young man's body" is that it heals quickly. But in fairness, rib injuries are very painful...hopefully it isn't a recurring thing.

Realistically, we now have a better inside presence to prevent just that sort of thing from opponenets, so we can expect other teams to do the same thing to Marvin. He will just need to mix it up some. Hitting the mid-range pull up jumper a few times could help.

The positive side of having good team depth is that it can allow the Hawks to play more aggressively this year - the downside being that there may be more nagging injuries along the way. Plus, it's easy for me as a fan to see that sort of thing from a 'team' perspective...it's another thing alltogether for the individual players who are out there taking the punishment for 82 games. Hopefully our guys will have the toughness to stay aggressive.

[TnDawg]

I don't think it will be as big a problem as last year because we have more enforcers to back them up during games. Marvin has already stated that was one of the reasons Woody held him back last year so he changed his mindset to handle it. Last year other than Batista we didn't have anyone laying the smack down on opposing teams players in response to their aggressive play. As Sekou has pointed out Lo and Shelden will provide that for us and hopefully be a deterent. I expect good things from our team this year.