Player of the Week – Kendall Marshall

Kendall Marshall has taken full advantage of his opportunity in LA

First all of all let me extend my apologies to our regular readers for this being the first Player of the Week article to hit your screens in 2014. I was actually fortunate enough to spend Christmas and the start of the New Year in Australia; one of the major benefits of which was actually being able to watch NBA basketball at a regular time of day! Hopefully visitors to the site have been kept up to date with the other unique content our writers have provided and you can now rest assured that the Player of the Week series is well and truly back.

Moving quickly on then it seems that as we get further and further into January those franchises that have season long turned their noses up at any mention of the dreaded T word are quickly loosening their grip on the proverbial rope. Early season playoff optimism has been replaced by coaches simply asking for competitiveness as certain rosters find themselves plagued by injuries. My job however, is to find the roses amongst these sides now sliding quickly towards the lottery and one player in particular has really stood out, not only over the last seven days, but over the last few weeks. Who knows whether this is because I expected so little from him (though that may have been well justified) or because his performances really have been of that high of a level but this weeks TLM Player of the Week award goes to….. drum roll please …. Kendalllllll “Magic” Marshall.

Over the past seven days the Lakers have faced up against the Cavs at Staples Center, before playing three straight on the road in Phoenix, Boston, and Toronto. Their record through these four games is 2-2, which is nothing to really write home about, but it’s Marshall’s continued play through these games that has had Laker fans marvelling at their D-League pickup. Through these four games Marshall averaged a shade over 12 points and 13 assists per game. However, I feel I’d be doing him a disservice if I didn’t mention that these are the exact same numbers he’s been putting up since injury trouble led to him getting his chance in the starting unit back on the third of Jan. Putting this in league wide context, through nine games as a starter his 12.4 assists per game has him ahead of Chris Paul’s league leading number of 11.2. Marshall also has three individual games with 15 or more assists, which puts him in some pretty special company; Nick Van Exel and Magic Johnson himself are actually the only other two Laker players to achieve this feat over the last 25 years.

The sheer impressiveness of his stats continues… Per Serena Winters, a reporter for Lakers Nation, Marshall is one of three players in the NBA to have posted five consecutive double doubles this season. He also has seven double doubles in his last nine games. To put that in context, Ricky Rubio of the Timberwolves has six in forty games. This is a guy that four weeks ago was without an NBA team, following a nothing first year in Phoenix, and was putting up numbers for the Delaware 87ers of the Development League.

I actually watched the Raptors Lakers matinee game on Sunday afternoon in order to give Marshall a closer look and what I was most impressed by was how quietly he was going about his business. At the end of the 1^st quarter I was fully aware that Kyle Lowry had racked up eight assists, but then I took a passing glance at the box score and spotted that Kendall had five. None of them were particularly special, there were no alley oops, nor flashy no look passes but he did exactly what was required of him. He continually worked the pick and roll with Pau and got Jonas Valančiūnas in early foul trouble and the Lakers only fell behind when Robert Sacre somehow managed to be a -19 in a little over five minutes of play. The Lakers ended up winning 112-106 and Marshall was instrumental in overturning the 19-point deficit. We all know that Nick Young is yet to see a shot he doesn’t like but it was Marshall continually getting him open looks that allowed him to get hot.

With Steve Blake, Jordan Farmar, Xavier Henry, Steve Nash and, of course, Kobe Bryant still to come back form injury who knows what Kendall’s role will be once the Lakers reach full strength. For now though, like I’m sure he is doing, we may as well enjoy the ride.

Schedule: @Chicago, @Miami, @Orlando, @NYK

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7nw1-nne8