After Luis takes a few days off, I hope he calls KM and says: "I told you that you have no idea what it's like playing with Yao on the court. But now I really remember". Martin is the best fit on this team for any Yao-oriented play. This season I expect him to take more shots than anyone. Of course around 30% of them won't count because he'll be fouled.
Actually, I wonder, with Kevin Martin's height, whether he would be a better feeder of Yao in the post compared to Brooks.... Hmmmm.....
If anything I think we might be overrating him. Yes he's put of good numbers..but hasn't really won anything. And I suspect in "crunch time" his productivity will go way down. Add that to the fact that I've seen 6 year old girls play better defense and I think we have an overrated one way player* * All of this is assuming that he hasn't made improvements in his overrall game this summer. But based on what I saw last season, I don't think he is "the piece" to put us over the hump.
I think he's fairly realistically rated by most fans here. Offensive threat, defensive liability, great off the ball...
He was on a terrible Kings team. He was in a position where he had to score 25 points a game to keep them in the game, just to have them end up losing by 10. He had to focus so much on offense, he had no energy for defense. That said, he is still way too skinny which could also attribute to being a bad defender. We'll see his true defense this season where he wont have to focus on being the #1 option on a bad team.
On what basis would you say that? You know that every phenomenon in the world is not governed by statistics right? There's such a thing as chronic injuries, like arthritis, back/spinal cord conditions, heart conditions, etc. And there's such a thing as past injuries remaining weak spots- like Amare's eyes, TMac's knees, etc. But there are also injuries that just happen, like broken bones, sprained muscles, etc. Those things happen to everyone who plays at this level, and some people have the bad luck to have it happen more times than others. I don't see how you can claim to predict that kind of injury (which is what calling him injury-prone is). At the end of the day though, for him an Yao, I'm most concerned that they stay healthy for exactly 16 games next year. As long as we get in the playoffs and win those 16 games, who cares if they lose a few weeks here or there in the season? :grin: :grin:
I think we are going to see Martin in the best possible setup for his skillset. I predict he is going to have a pretty dang good year. He probably will be an 18-22 ppg with super high effeciency. Man o man, I can't wait for the season to start.
The "hasn't won anything" thing is bogus unless you can bring proof. The only individual on a basketball team on whose head you can really put winning or losing is the owner. They are the only person in total control of the entire operation. If you're going to blame a single individual player for a team's lack of success, you need to bring some evidence beyond just their record, that it was actually that player that screwed them. ((For example: you could bring video of Lebron's play in the last game of the playoffs as evidence. You could bring TMac's injury record (or Yao's for that matter) at key points in time that caused losses.) But just the team record while that player happened to be on that team means nothing.
Martin is a beast. He's a pure scorer and boy, does he score. He's not flashy, nor outspoken, but he takes care of business on the court. I see him as a scoring specialist, role player to a superstar. I don't see him carrying a team by himself. He did it in the past with Sac but I didn't think he was comfortable taking up that role. I could be wrong but that was just my impression of him.
Got to admit, I only followed Martin very closely for one year when he was on the Kings, because he was on my fantasy team that year. He was injured throughout the year and when he did play, he contributed nothing for me but points, and very often at a low fg % (which is why I didn't get all the talk from Morey on how he was one of the most efficient scorers) So that one year kind of soured me on him, I think it was '08 '09 if i'm not mistaken Anyways here's hoping for a very healthy and efficient year for him this year
Because fg% is a horrible measure of scoring efficiency. If he missed a shot but got fouled on the attempt and made the two free throws, fg% counts that as 0/1, even though he made the same number of points for your team as if he made the shot. Now imagine how bad fg% is if he's fouled on a 3pt attempt (since fg% doesn't even count 3pt shots as more valuable than 2's). etc.
I read this entire thread and cannot believe nobody (maybe I didn't see it) commented on WHY we got Martin. Morey said last year that the single most efficient player in the league when in the bonus is.......Yao! So who gets us into the bonus? Players like Kyle Lowery and Kevin Martin who attack the basket and have a knack for drawing fouls. Then, once in the bonus, you drop the ball into Yao and voila! Martin, iirc, had one of the highest FT's per minute in the league, as did Lowry. So with that thought, every poster who commented on Martin's game from last year, hasn't even seen why we got him yet. His ability to get us into the bonus and score will make us even better with Yao in the game.
Your definition of injury-prone is obviously different than mine. If there is a chronic/reoccurring illness/injury, then yes, by my definition they are injury-prone (see: Yao Ming's foot). However, Martin's injuries are not chronic and seemingly random. Sometimes people just get unlucky and get hurt. But, like I said, you have a different definition, so you'll believe what you want (apparently you want him to be injured?). What? You expected him to just flip a switch with a new team? Really? He doesn't train/practice defense as much for 3-4 years and you expect him to suddenly begin to when his offensive load begins to get shared with Scola/Brooks? All you can ask is that he focuses more on it this off-season and during the season, which he's said he will, and we can see the results then. I think we'll be surprised by his effectiveness defensively.
Here's an example: if I took 15 shots, got fouled on one of them (and made the two free throws), and made 14 others, what is my fg%? So it does count against your fg%.
You'd have a FG% of 100%, 14-14. It's like in baseball where a sacrifice doesn't count as an AB. Funny enough, your TS% would be over 100% even if all FG's were 2's: 30 / (2 * (14 + 0.44 * 2)) = 100.8%
