Every team has a fifth option. The player defences are happy to leave alone, the one who is not meant to swing games. For Manchester, that role belonged to Zak Irvin — measured, selective and quietly essential.
Before his injury at the start of November, Manchester asked a lot of him. Only Max Jones had logged more minutes for the team in the SLB, and Irvin did it without demanding the ball. He was trusted to stay on the floor, connect line-ups, and give the team shape.
He returns now to a Manchester side that has started to click without him. The environment he is stepping back into is different, which makes the challenge clearer: fitting in is something that has to be earned again.
A Selective Shot Diet
This season, Irvin’s shot chart is narrow by design. Most of his attempts come at the rim, with a small number of corner threes and almost nothing in between. There’s no sense of exploration here — just a clear understanding of where his shots should come from.
*Shot chart courtesy of @jumpshot_theory
Efficient by Nature
The table below shows how often each Manchester player takes a shot when they are on the court, alongside their effective field-goal percentage.
| Player | FGA Per Minute | eFG% |
|---|---|---|
| Max Jones | 0.52 | 47.3% |
| Jordan Johnson | 0.42 | 49.4% |
| Kaiyem Cleary | 0.42 | 55.9% |
| Cody John | 0.38 | 38.1% |
| Patrick Smith Jr | 0.39 | 55.0% |
| Kayne Henry | 0.38 | 43.2% |
| Gabe Osabuohien | 0.29 | 51.8% |
| Tim Adetukasi | 0.28 | 59.9% |
| Zak Irvin | 0.26 | 57.3% |
| Kyle Carey | 0.23 | 57.1% |
| Matthew Nicholson | 0.17 | 60.0% |
*Only players who have played more than twenty minutes in the SLB this season are included.
Irvin sits at the low end for usage and the high end for efficiency, a combination that holds weight because of how many minutes he plays.
He can handle the ball, make the extra pass, switch defensively across positions and cut along the baseline for off-ball finishes. What he offers is reliability — steady production built on trust, not touches. He shapes his game to serve the team, not himself, a skill that becomes more valuable, not less, when the team around you has changed.
Continuity and Trust
Irvin is one of the few players carried over from last season’s roster. In a summer when the club rebuilt around quality homegrown signings, he was one import they could not afford to lose.
They kept him and made him captain — a reflection of how much they valued his ability to steady a new group on and off the floor.
That trust has been growing for a while. When Herman Mandole arrived midway through last year, Irvin was the player who benefited most. His minutes jumped by nearly five per game, more than anyone else on the roster.
That shift said as much about Mandole as it did about Irvin. Mandole identified Irvin as a player he could trust to adapt — to take on minutes, responsibility and defensive assignments without needing the offence to bend around him.
That confidence carried into Otten’s first months in charge. Now, with Manchester having found rhythm during Irvin’s absence, the question is whether Irvin can apply those same instincts — restraint, awareness, adaptability — to fit back into a version of the team that no longer looks the same.
The Kind of Player Every Team Wants
You see what that trust makes possible on the floor. Irvin takes the toughest defensive match-ups, makes the extra rotation, keeps the floor spaced and hits the right shots when they come. He doesn’t demand control of possessions; he gives shape to them.
Not every team in the SLB has that luxury. Depth is uneven, and many line-ups include at least one player opponents are happy to target. Manchester’s advantage is that their fifth man is built for moments like this — stepping into an evolving group without asking it to bend around him.
Irvin is not the headline act, and he is not meant to be. But there is beauty in that — the quiet certainty of a player who understands what a team needs, even when that need has changed.
The best teams are built to make room for players like Zak Irvin — especially when making room is the hardest part.
