You'll never see Marvin do this.

[macdaddy]

You know both Chill and Marvin can be good. Its not an either or thing.

Now i'll bash Marvin. His previous claim to fame was that he had improved every year but you can't say that anymore. As soon as Woody had a really good replacement Marvin's minutes have dropped. Marvin may have sat and watched the lead disappear but that happens when you're 0-4, 1 rebound, 2 turnovers and just an embarrasing offensive foul as he crashed through the lane not even heading toward the basket. I'll concede that his +/- is usually very good but only a +2 last night. So I don't see how he deserved to play in the 4th. If Teague had turned in this stat line we wouldn't see him for 2 weeks.

[niremetal]

You know both Chill and Marvin can be good. Its not an either or thing.

Now i'll bash Marvin. His previous claim to fame was that he had improved every year but you can't say that anymore. As soon as Woody had a really good replacement Marvin's minutes have dropped. Marvin may have sat and watched the lead disappear but that happens when you're 0-4, 1 rebound, 2 turnovers and just an embarrasing offensive foul as he crashed through the lane not even heading toward the basket. I'll concede that his +/- is usually very good but only a +2 last night. So I don't see how he deserved to play in the 4th. If Teague had turned in this stat line we wouldn't see him for 2 weeks.

As much as Diesel and others will deny it, his defense this year has been very good. Just observing him, it's easy to see that - even when he gets switched off onto a quicker or bigger player, he finds a way to contest pretty every shot taken by the guy he's guarding/switched onto. Without fouling, too.

Check out the 82games.com pages for the Hawks, Cavs, Celts, and Magic. If you click on each player’s name and scroll down, you see a row labeled “Defense: Pts per 100 Poss.” The two numeric columns show how many points per 100 possessions the team allows when the player is on the court versus when he is off the court. Marvin has the best net rating (-9.6) for that not just on the Hawks, and not just among the SFs on those teams, but amongst ALL rotation players on those 4 teams.

Now that obviously doesn’t mean that Marvin is the best defender on the Hawks, much less among all the players in the East elite. No one stat can possibly capture that. But it means that we “lose” more points when Marvin leaves the floor than when any other player leaves the floor – ie it means that going from Marvin to his subs has been the biggest “step down” defensively in terms of points allowed. It’s true that our offense gets better when Marvin leaves, but not by nearly as much (points alw’d is -9.6; points scored is -4.0). Anyway, Marvin isn’t scoring as much, but the advanced stats pretty much all show that his defense so far this year is actually even better than last year’s. He’s not producing offensively, but really…who takes fewer shots if we want our SF to score more?

Of course, the lesson from that particular stat might just be “we need a better defensive SF off the bench,” which many people have said. But all the advanced stats I’ve looked at on hoopdata, 82games, basketballvalue, basketball-reference, etc all indicate that Marvin has been one of the league’s best defensive SFs this year, and has shown a slight improvement from last year on that end.

The offense, of course, is another story. And I actually would like to see us swap Mo into the starting lineup for Marvin. That would provide us with more balance coming off the bench, because our second unit is a defensive train wreck. It seriously seems like recently, every time the second unit enters the game, the opposing team scores on each of the next half-dozen possessions. Mo is the best defender on the second unit, but he’s undersized and somewhat foul prone. Teague is still a foul waiting to happen, Zaza seems to have lost his confidence, and Jamal is…well, still terrible on the defensive end. He at least seems to be giving more of an effort, but he gets caught out of position way too much.

On the other hand, the role of Marvin on the first unit right now is “stand in the corner and wait for a bail-out pass, and then go play defense.” Mo can do that just fine, and JJ is big enough to cover most SFs, at least for some stretches of the game. I would like to see that lineup change, but I don’t see it happening with Woody. I think we’ll come to regret that if our luck with injuries this year runs out, because unlike last year, Marvin hasn’t been involved in the offense enough that he’d be ready to step up when injuries happen like he did last year.

Edited February 25, 2010 by niremetal

[macdaddy]

I agree. I think Marvin is a good defender. Its disappointing his offensive game is so poor this year. I realize there aren't plays being run for him but to me that is a good comparison to Chill. Chill never had a play run for him but he scored points from rebounds and transition very effectively.

I like Marvin but I don't like what he does when he gets the ball. I feel like if he was going to develop a solid offensive game he should have done it by now. I'm glad he's a good defender but we could use more than Ira Newble out of that position.

Havin him on the second unit is sure worth a try. I think we are seeing some complacency with the players. A little change of pace always helps keep people focused.