All that being said, I still dont think any roster should start wth a guy who is not a matchup nightmare on offense (That's my personal criteria for who you should build a roster around.). I dont think teams will ever have to game plan or really focus on doubling Marcus even if he reaches his full offensive potential.
I'm on the opposite opinion of this. I think that if you're a liability on defense, you really shouldn't be on the floor. Isaiah is the best example of an offensive mismatch on this team because of his quickness, but we can't afford to have him start if you don't expect every guard to abuse his defense.
I disagree,
I believe that at the end of the day, the game of basketball is all about scoring more than your opponent.
Whether you achieve that by dominant defense (by making it hard for them to score) or by dominant offense (by beating their defense) doesn't matter, as long as at the end of the day you are scoring more points than your opponent is.
I do have a slight preference for defense over offence simply because defense is an effort-area and you CAN be great on defense every night if you put in the effort. However on offense it's normal for players to go through streaks, for teams to have bad shooting nights, etc. Because of that I feel like defense is the one thing you can really rely on every night.
Still though, statistically Isaiah Thomas is an elite offensive player - not just good or excellent, but elite. The numbers he puts up on offense (both in terms of efficiency and in terms of outright scoring per minute) are right up there with anybody in the league. Advanced stats indicate that he has more positive impact on offense then he does negative impact on defense, and that means that when he's on the floor, we are winning the PG spot.
If you win every position, then you are winning the game.
On a team full of guys who are defense / hustle oriented, I think it's even more critical for us to have a guy like Thomas who can really take over and create offense on demand.