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Hands down the best two-way Small Forwards of the 2000's in my opinion. Who had the better peak?

Marion, on both sides of the ball. Artest was hyper aggressive but this had negatives as well as positives. Marion was more controlled while also more athletic.

Marion is more dependent on the system. Because of his lack of handles. Wouldn't have been close to as good offensively outside of Phoenix. Sort of like the Draymond of his era in that regard. Artest excelled in Chicago, Indy, and Sacramento.

In the 5 years before Nash, Marion was basically Artest with a much better attitude. Nash made him much more efficient but he was averaging 19/9/3 the year before Nash and filling up the stat sheet with blocks, steals, and low turnover rates as well. Nash and the move to PF made his efficiency jump but otherwise he was the same player. No handles, butt ugly looking shot, great athleticism, great movement off ball which is where he separated himself from Artest offensively, great motor on both sides. After helping Nash carry the team without Amare to nearly equal heights, he felt disrespected as Amare came back and got a bunch of All-NBA awards while he didn't even get All-Defense (despite finishing 3rd one year in DPOY voting) but even then his attitude was better than Mr. Malice at the Palace. Artest was a beast, Marion was a freak of nature.

System meaning pace not Nash. Suns finished 5th, 6th, and 10th twice in pace before Nash got there. That suited Marion as all he could do is run in transition and shoot wide open 3s. You should have saw him in Miami. He is literally useless in a slow paced half court system, as he again has no handles and no touch in the paint. That would have been his career under different circumstances.

And I just want to say I'm not here to bash Marion as he was a fun player to watch dunk, and he had a good motor and athleticism.

SHAQ32 wrote:He is literally useless in a slow paced half court system, as he again has no handles and no touch in the paint.

Inaccurate. Not the part about handles, of course, but off-ball movement and offensive rebounding (strengths for Marion) work well in the environment you described, around other focal action. The bit about touch in the paint was also horrifically inaccurate. He finished very well in close. He had no iso post game, like he had no on-ball isolation game, for sure. But he did well on cuts, putbacks and so forth. What he lacked was shot creation.

Marion was really good, but the system was still dependent on a great PG like Nash. Artest looked better in Indy, but talentwise they were pretty close.

It's Artest if it's just 1 year. If I was building a team though I'd want Marion every time.

penbeast0 wrote:In the 5 years before Nash, Marion was basically Artest with a much better attitude. Nash made him much more efficient but he was averaging 19/9/3 the year before Nash and filling up the stat sheet with blocks, steals, and low turnover rates as well. Nash and the move to PF made his efficiency jump but otherwise he was the same player. No handles, butt ugly looking shot, great athleticism, great movement off ball which is where he separated himself from Artest offensively, great motor on both sides. After helping Nash carry the team without Amare to nearly equal heights, he felt disrespected as Amare came back and got a bunch of All-NBA awards while he didn't even get All-Defense (despite finishing 3rd one year in DPOY voting) but even then his attitude was better than Mr. Malice at the Palace. Artest was a beast, Marion was a freak of nature.

Would we really call the shot "butt ugly", or just childish?

It was a weird shot, but I just want to point out to all readers: it went in.

He was a career 81.0% FT shooter, peaking at just >85% TWICE.
He was a career 33.1% 3pt shooter [3.1 att/100]; and specifically in '02-'08 was 34.7% on 4.4 3PA/100.
He was a career 37.6% from 16-23' (38.3% during his PHX years only). Not great, but semi-respectable.

Weird looking, but weirdly effective.

Agree about off-ball movement; that's what really worked so well next to Nash. He was great at filling an open lane, or sporadically working the baseline.