the memory is short it seems. martin's defensive problems come from a lack of physicality mostly. inability to fight through picks, to muscle people out of their preferred spots, etc. to me, that's forgiveable as long as the effort is there. most of defensive success is in intelligent effort. tracy's defense was horrid 90% of the time because he barely tried. he would just call out for shane or ron to pick up his man on the other side of the pick so he wouldnt have to actually exert the effort defensively. so to the casual observer, sure, it looks like the rockets switched the pick and things progressed from there. what's not readily apparent is that they werent supposed to switch the pick in the first place. rarely did he do much defensively intelligent unless he was trying to get a highlight out of it, or was guarding the ball in isolation situations. anyway, i dont want to turn this into another tracy thread, but my point is that if the rockets could be successful with a guy who didn't give a crap playing the sg spot, they can be successful with martin playing it. if they run into a particularly difficult sg matchup, you crossmatch trevor, shane, or kyle onto the troublemaker and you're set. in today's NBA you can't solve all your roster problems by throwing money at them. there isn't enough room under the salary cap to fill every spot with an expensive guy. you build the most effective roster possible, balancing offensive and defensive ability, youth and experience, quality and depth, and the rest of the problems you solve through intelligent gameplanning and advantages in execution.
