Martin acquisition achieving its goal and...boosting defense?

I agree, I am an enormous Lowry fan. What I said in this case was more of a blanket statement about the nature of 5-man unit stats. While Lowry can certainly compete with starters, some might be tempted to make a case that the statistical success of the entire Andersen-Landry-Budinger-Lowry-Brooks unit (let's call it B) says that it was 'better' than our starting five. Not necessarily so. What it tells me is that the above lineup was better compared to the competition they played against than our old starting five (A); since ON AVERAGE (A) was facing the opponent's starters and (B) was facing the opponent's bench (B)'s plus-minus gives a slightly inflated picture of their value. I'm not saying Lowry, Landry and Co. weren't a vital piece to all of our wins, just a bench like ours posting a high +/- is not as impressive as if a starting five were to post a similar +/-. The same could be said for the unit's offensive and defensive ratings. When the new starting five achieves stronger statistical performance than the old (over a long period, not this tiny sample size obviously), I think that's when we are able to compare their improvement to any drop the bench performance has taken and judge whether we improved.

Okay, we've played a few bad teams since the trade, but we've also played against the Magic and solid Spurs and Raptors teams (granted, injured solid Raptors team). That's why we need a larger sample, but it's not as if we're on a 7-game homestand against the Nets.