To my surprise, most people really like the resigning of Marvin Williams. Some may even say love. Which if Marvin Williams fails to live up to this contract, I will look forward to 95% of those people revising history to yell and scream about how they never wanted him (which is pretty much what every national media person did after having Marvin ahead of CP3 on their draft board).
Of course, there is still dissention. Some comes from outright belligerent hatred for what I can only assume stems from some wrong Marvin has done to their family. But others have less disdain for Marvin and more just a hope that the Hawks would sign someone other than our man with the mustache.
I am not here to reconcile hate but feel the need to address that oh so common grass is greener idea on almost any resigning.
Age is just a number?
Marvin Williams turned 23 in June. That is exactly one year younger than Trevor Ariza, six less than Lamar Odom, nearly a decade from Vince Carter, and a half century gap with Hedo Turkolu (ok fine he is only 30). To argue for one of these guys over Marvin is to assume certain ideas to the detriment of Williams and ignore all other assumptions that bring the Mustache into a better light.
What in God's green goodness am I talking about? Well, Marvin outperformed Ariza in almost every conceivable category in the per 36 (other than assists), and Marvin is younger. So in a sense, the argument has to go, Marvin has less upside because he has played more. Put another way, Ariza is more desirable because we have seen less of him. This however ignores his actual stats which are worse than Marvins (have I said that yet), his small sample size, and that his best production came next to the second best player in the league.
Fine then, give me a veteran. No more Marvin the project. But Williams has not only improved every year, he has added entire areas to improve in. But those other three guys are already improved. They are better than Marvin now you say. This may be true, but if the Hawks need, say, Lamar Odom to win the championship you are already assuming many other players on the team will improve dramatically and that Odom will be the same player he was in his contract year.
So in the end only young players other than Marvin are going to improve and only older players are not going to drop off production.
But what about the fountain of youth?
Lamar Odom peaked in terms of PER between 2003-2006 (the only seasons he has been above 17). In those seasons he was shockingly the ages of 24 to 26 and had finished four seasons before the string of those three seasons. At the start of Hedo's fifth season, he went on a run of his three best seasons in the next four years. He was 25 in that fifth year. Vince Carter? He just completed the two least productive seasons of his career.
Assuming any of these guys fit well into a Joe Johnson dominated offense (Odom and Ariza are the only real possibilities there), none of these guys are guaranteed to play at the same level of past years. In fact, Lamar Odom has never been thought of as a great teammate until he was in a contract year and receiving death stairs from Kobe Bryant. Trevor Ariza was never even thought of. And most of these guys have already started their decline.
Final thoughts
Marvin may not work out earn every bit of that 40 million. But we know what we are getting with him. A guy who has produced, is still getting better, and will only be 23 at the start of the season. I honestly do not know what we would get next season with Ariza, and I would be scared to think about what we would get in three years with those other veterans.