While I appreciate your perspective, I’m going defend Bags (again). He is a valuable player for the Kings. The teams lack of defensive identity is not on him alone, and, I think the forum needs to be careful about these ongoing witch hunts.
On Marvin’s defence:
- Defence was listed as a weakness when he entered the NBA, he doesn’t look like a good defender, and statistically, he isn’t. It is unlikely he will ever be a leading defensive player. This does not mean he has not improved on that side of the ball and will not continue to improve. He does make defensive plays (e.g., he leads the team in charges taken - link), he leaves his feet less often when challenging shots, and is getting into foul trouble less. It may also be worth highlighting the defence of other bigs drafted alongside MBIII (link - scroll down a little).
- I also don’t completely buy that it is his defence that the forum dislikes. Harry was awful defensively, but half the posters here were ready to get down on their knees after every social media post he made.
On the team’s defence:
- The team is poor defensively regardless of MBIII’s presence. When Marvin missed two games earlier, the defence did not improve. The team’s defence was poor for most of last year – despite MBIII being out. It was poor under Dave when MBIII only had a bench role as a rookie. The team is not set up to be a good defensive team. Fox, Buddy, Harrison, Cojo, Tyrese, and Belly all have a negative defensive impact worse than MBIII's (link). In contrast, Baze, who we let walk in free agency, may be an All-Defensive team candidate this year according to several statistical metrics (link). If the team had better perimeter defenders, some decisions would be easier for MBIII. Not saying his hands are clean, but if you want a witch hunt you may need to burn most of the village.
On Marvin’s improvement:
- Last year, fans ragged on MBIII because he wasn’t playing. This year, he is playing. Fans whinged he couldn’t hit a three consistently (one fan– who is consistently negative about MBIII – took delight at counting his visible misses in the back corner of short team practice videos). He now hits the corner three consistently. He scores in a variety of ways – in the post, off offensive boards, in the pick and role, from the corner, and on the break. None of these require him to have the ball in his hands for more than a couple of seconds. This season – MBIII’s PER is in the top 90 of all players. His overall impact, according to BBall index, is in the top half of all players, which earns him a ‘starter’ level rating, despite his minutes being in the bottom half of the league (link). He is 21 and his trajectory is up. So let's not spend so much time talking about what Marvin is not we miss out on what he is.
I don’t know Marvin. I don’t follow him on social media and can’t imagine we would get along all that well if we met. Maybe we could have a decent-ish conversation about rap if we got stuck in an elevator – although I suspect the generational difference would make that convo short lived. I don’t support Duke either. But today – he is a King. Maybe not just a King – but a young guy, with talent, who is improving, and who has a skillset that can complement Fox and Hali. I’m not driving him to the airport for another draft pick or for some overrated scrub on a mid-level team that some square on this site has a crush on. Would I drive him to the airport for Ben Wallace – probably - if he was still young. But if that is the direction the Kings want to go they will need to do more than just ship out MBIII.
Most of what you're talking about here has nothing to do with what I wrote. I'm not talking about how fans feel on social media or the Harry Giles cult following. I'm not laying the entirety of our poor defense at Marvin's feet. I'm not running some kind of crusade to get him kicked off the team because he irks me. All I'm doing is reporting on what I see when I watch the games. I realize we'd be trading him for 10 cents on the dollar right now and I'm not going to argue that losing him is addition by subtraction either because I think he contributes enough positives to the team to be worth keeping in some circumstances. I don't even care that he's trying to build a rap career on the side. I appreciate when athletes challenge the stereotype that they can't be well-rounded interesting people outside of whatever sport they excel at.
So what am I arguing then?
I guess I'm just saying that I'd be surprised if the light bulb goes on for him. Aside from about 3 weeks at the start of this season he's been incredibly consistent in his defensive deficiencies. Willie Cauley-Stein had the same brief tease in the second half of his rookie season where I started to think maybe my analysis on him was wrong but then he never really showed that spark again. I don't want to say he lacks effort because he's clearly shown us effort this season. But even when he does make smart rotations and slide his feet to stay in front of his man he doesn't know how to use his body to alter their shot. He doesn't box out to control rebounds. He gets his body between the basket and the ball, which is good, but he doesn't seem to understand how to use angles and momentum to build leverage so his being there is mostly ineffective. And that's just the stuff that doesn't show up on the stat sheet. A guy with his size and athletic gifts should not be averaging a mere 0.6 blocks per 36 minutes. And that's especially sad this season because weakside shot-blocking is probably the only aspect of defense where he's shown any aptitude in the past.
I know this is hard to hear and maybe it will be another 2-3 years before you accept it but let me try to spell it out as simply as I can. The clearest path forward for this team involves Bagley growing into a player worthy of a top 5 selection but simply
wanting that to happen is not going to make it true. And as bad as we are, we're not going to add one top 5 player to our starting lineup (even a Cade Cunningham or Evan Mobley) and then reinvent ourselves as a playoff team next year. I'm sorry for anyone who still thinks that's happening this season but you're dreaming. I suppose we
could in that it's not logically
impossible but it's unlikely. Here's a more practical assessment of our situation: the young players on this team right now who could be considered important parts of our core are Fox, Haliburton, and Bagley. If we're feeling extra charitable we can add to that list Woodard and maybe Metu. Pick 2 of them. That's your core. The rest maybe can be rotation players getting 20ish minutes a game here and there but we do not have anything more than 15% of a winning team with the kind of performances we've been turning in for the last month.