Today in the New York Times it referred to Marvin Williams as defending the best wing scorer v. the Hawks on what was the NBA’s 7th best defensive.
The Hawks used a lot of switching principles in their defense with the athleticism of Joe Johnson, Marvin, Josh Smith and Al Horford. Therefore, none of these numbers are fair to Marvin establishing him as a defender.
Many of these players slide between the 2 and the 3 and Joe Johnson often guarded the 2 guard while Marvin slide between the 3 and the 4.
Nonetheless, I thought it was worth a look.
No surprises here. You can’t stop the main scorers in the NBA. However, it doesn’t seem as though Marvin and the Hawks had much impact on any of the top scorers over the last few seasons.
It is interesting to me Deng and Ginobili seemed to cause the Hawks and Marvin the most problem, players on the move playing off teammates.
The turnover numbers are very high which is what the Hawks predicated their defense upon. Notice each player is turning the ball over nearly 3 times a game.
What you don’t see on this graph is looking over the individual games the Hawks and Marvin were able to force some of the best players into off nights. That is a win when you are able to do that.
Marvin does foul a lot. Look at the graph below of his performance against the top wings.
The two highlighted are Marvin’s games v. the Lakers and Spurs. If Marvin is defending Kobe it is taking a lot out of his offensive game. Same can be said for Manu and the Spurs.
Otherwise, it looks as though Marvin in these games stayed near his career numbers and made the opponent pay attention to him defensively.
This data has a huge amount of noise but thought it was worth the look.
