This wasn't supposed to be the next Fix... we should've been able to kick this one down the road a ways. This should've been our immigration reform. But once again, the Warriors have screwed up something so simple, so badly, that course correction can't wait any longer.
Franchise Fix #5: we need to establish a clear understanding of Monta Ellis's strengths and weaknesses. Our team is currently built around Monta; our team currently sucks. For this team to improve, we need to figure out what isn't working in Monta's game, why it isn't, and what he and the coaching staff can do to fix it.
Monta, the Warriors' signature player, symbolizes the team pretty well: he is sometimes exciting, usually disappointing, and always in flux. He oscillates between the two guard positions practically every play; he goes from looking like a lockdown defender to an outright matador; he is either desperate to lead this team or desperate to leave it. Depending on who you ask, he is either the team's only bright spot or the team's biggest problem. There are fans who are clamoring to get rid of him, and there are fans who are clamoring to get rid of everyone except him. Neither the team nor the fanbase seems quite sure what to make of the guy.
And when you think about it, that's kind of weird. It's not like Monta just showed up the other day -- he's been here since 2005. Monta's been a Warrior for as long as Chris Paul has been a Hornet and Deron Williams has been a Jazz(-er? -man? -erciser?). Monta's been in the league as long as Ronny, who looks like he burst from some sort of hellmouth, fully grown and bearded, more than 600 years ago. Monta has played more games in a Warriors uniform than Mitch Richmond did. Hell, if Monta's still here past next year's trade deadline, his Warriors tenure will be longer than Tim Hardaway's. Why does it feel like we still don't know who he is?
Some of it, to be sure, is on Monta himself. His play is often inconsistent; his shyness with the media makes him difficult to read; his relationship with the team seems up-and-down, for reasons mopedial and otherwise. Even this week, he's found a new way to surprise, by showing off a crisp, Baronesque turnaround jumper out of the high post. He's a bit of a moving target... not the easiest player to evaluate.
But if you want to optimize your team's chances of success, you still have to evaluate him, and every player, as best you can. And in the more than three full seasons' worth of Monta we've seen thus far, a number of things have indeed become clear. So let's shelve the love and the hate and the wide-eyed dreaming and resentment; let's look at the guy as objectively as we can. Let's talk about what Monta is, and what he isn't.
MONTA IS:
1) Good. This should go without saying, but when it comes to Monta, few things have gone without saying of late. Point is, we know Monta can be a very good player, as we've seen him do it. He was a primary anchor for a 48-win team two years ago, and advanced statistics show he wasn't just along for the ride; various metrics rated him as being worth eight or nine wins that year, making him one of the 30 or so best players in the game. Jason Richardson has never had a season as good as Monta's '07-'08. Stephen Jackson has never come close. Mitch Richmond and Latrell Sprewell both had seasons around that level, but not many. Monta has proven that he can be a very good player in the NBA... at his best, he is far more than just a 20-point scorer for a bad team.
2) Working extremely hard to try to help this team. One of my real pet peeves is the tendency of many fans to try to extrapolate an athlete's mindset/emotional state/favorite ice cream flavor from the way they play their chosen sport. We don't know these people, people. I have never met Monta Ellis and never will, and I will never know what lies in his heart of hearts. He may love the Warriors like a fat kid love cake; he may hate them with every fiber of his being. Regardless of his motives, he is busting his ass for the team right now, playing physically and tirelessly on both ends in league-leading minutes. Any suggestion of a lack of professionalism or of a bad-faith effort on his part is unfounded. We don't have to know why Monta's trying hard to recognize that he is. And that's good... all things being equal, you want players who try had.
3) Capable of defending shooting guards. It would be stretching things to say that Monta is a good defender at the two; Brandon Roy shutdown aside, he has had some rough moments. But thanks to his effort and lateral quickness, he has been a fairly credible defender at the two thus far, decent enough so that you can play him there. That's a very, very good thing.
4) Getting better at shooting threes. He's 15 of 42 on the year, for a .357 percentage... that's not by any means elite, but it's above average. Monta, and we, will profit if he can become at least a moderate threat from beyond the arc. Things are looking up on that front.
MONTA IS NOT:
1) Great. While Monta was probably one of the 30 best players in the league two years ago, he was probably not one of the 20 best players. And that season, his high-water mark by a good bit, was built primarily on wildly efficient shooting that will not be easy to equal. A guy who's Monta's size is not likely to become one of the best players in the NBA; the only transcendently good player under 6'5" is Chris Paul, and he does eight important things much better than Monta does. If Monta Ellis is your best player, you will never, ever win a championship. That's not a condemnation of Monta... the some goes for all but a dozen or so players. But it's worth making clear. His ceiling simply isn't that high.
2) A point guard. He's shaped like a point guard, he runs like a point guard, and for little stretches here and there he can even play like a point guard. But Monta Ellis is just not a point guard. Isn't, isn't, isn't. His career passing numbers are almost identical to Latrell Sprewell's, and while Spree was a good passer for a two, a point guard he wasn't. Monta's assist/turnover ratio this season is 1.17... there are over 15 centers who rate better in significant minutes. We drafted the guy hoping he'd develop into a viable point guard. He has since spent 8,459 minutes on the floor showing us that he isn't... his passing numbers are no better than they were when he was a rookie. It's time to let this dream finally die.
3) So indispensable that we need to play him for 48 minutes every night. It was nice to see him get a breather tonight, but he should be getting some of those whether or not we're getting blown out. As admirably as Monta has this crush of minutes, there's really no point in riding him so hard. CJ, Curry and Morrow can all pick up some minutes in his stead. It'd actually be good for Curry to be able to run the offense a bit without the distraction of having to defer to Monta. And it'd be good for Monta, too. Defenses have gotten more and more effective at shutting him down through the course of games, because they never have to re-adjust to his presence; you get pretty used to a guy's rhythms if he's always out there, doing his thing. And on a related note, Monta is not...
4) Likely to succeed by driving straight at triple-teams repeatedly in the fourth quarter. You would think that somebody in the Warriors organization would've picked up on this. Late in every close game, Monta gets tunnel vision, winds up at the top of the key like Wile E. Coyote preparing to chase the Road Runner, and sprints straight into a blocked shot or a turnover... rinse and repeat. Is there a more blatantly obvious, easily solved strategy in sports right now? Is Keith Smart letting this happen because he thinks the physical act of coaching causes pneumonia? Wouldn't it make a little more sense to have a variety of plays, featuring a variety of players, when we're trying to score important baskets? Wouldn't that make Monta's late drives a bit more effective?
This all suggests a simple set of guidelines by which to handle to Monta going forward.
• The team will embrace Monta publicly and without reservation. No more criticism of his leadership, no more public discussion of his flaws. We make it clear that he's our guy.
• Having said that, the team will also not publicly put pressure on him to heal this team's many woes or carry it on his back. Expectations are quietly ratcheted down a tad; we're not expecting him to turn into Chris Paul.
• Monta is our shooting guard, pure and simple, no asterisks, no exceptions. He plays the two, he defends opposing twos... our point guard is Stephen Curry. When Curry's not on the floor, CJ's our point guard; if we trade CJ, we pick up a D-Leaguer to back up Curry. Monta is our star, our guy, our ultimate prom date, but he is not our point guard, and he's going to have to deal with that. (Our point guards will be looking to feed him on cuts very frequently, so he shouldn't be too annoyed.)
• Monta will play 36-38 minutes a game. He'll get a decent-sized rest in each half, to recharge his batteries and to force the opposing defense to re-jigger their strategy.
• Fourth quarters, like all quarters, will now feature a variety of offensive sets and featured scorers: we will take some of the pressure off of Monta by highlighting Maggette and our various shooters from distance. Monta is by no means barred from trying to make some plays, but tunnel-vision drives into double-teams will get him chewed out from now on.
• We will encourage Monta to continue to develop his three-point stroke, and to look for it more often in games.
Will these guidelines ensure that Monta returns to his '07-'08 level of production? By no means. We can't know if he'll ever get back there, or if even better things lie on the horizon... with Monta, as with any player, you can not avoid a huge degree of uncertainty. But these guidelines will help. They will make our offense more efficient and more effective. They will make Curry's task easier, as he can now focus on learning to run an offense without worrying about stepping on toes. And they will help to dispel a touch of the confusion that permeates this organization. Clarifying Monta Ellis's role will do a good bit to Fix. This. Franchise.
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2 comments:
I like all your guidelines other than the 3 pointer comment. While Monta Ellis has never been a great three point shooter, one thing I always liked about Ellis is that he is doess not shoot too many. he knows his limits of his range and I am very happy with him firing between 1-3 a game. Given his lightning first step and dynamic mid range game, the fact that he can hit a wide open three keeps the defense honest. But I would rather see him take it to the rack more than shoot the three ball.
My one big question, that is left unaswered in your post, is Monta Ellis a Star? I have a hard time envisioning a team with Monta Ellis as there second best player being anything but a borderline playoff team. If he is our best player, I think even healthy making the playoffs will be a stretch. All the bottom dwellers last year (with the exception of Minnesota) have made improvements in the West.
"Given his lightning first step and dynamic mid range game, the fact that he can hit a wide open three keeps the defense honest. But I would rather see him take it to the rack more than shoot the three ball."
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with this... I didn't make that sufficiently clear. Asking Monta to become a three-point specialist would be counterproductive; he's a slasher first and foremost, and he should be. But as you say, keeping the defense honest has value. If he can up both his percentage and his attempts per game a tiny bit, it will become a weapon that opponents have to prepare for more energetically. That can only help his slashing.
"My one big question, that is left unaswered in your post, is Monta Ellis a Star?"
I deliberately didn't answer that question, because I think the jury's still out on that one. Monta's somewhere north of "decent player" and somewhere south of "superstar", but it's hard to narrow it down further than that with any confidence.
It's certainly possible that he could outdo his '07-'08 performance, combining the efficiency of that year with more consistent defense and a few new tricks (threes, post play). If he did that, he would surely be a Star. On the other hand, you could argue that that year was largely a product of Baron setting him up, defenses not keying on him and fluky-good shooting, and that he won't reach those heights again. If he doesn't, he's not a Star by any stretch of the imagination.
But I'll say this: while I'm not sure we could make the playoffs with Monta as our best player, we could absolutely make the playoffs with Monta as our "star". It's not hard to envision a scenario where Biedrins and Randolph are actually the more valuable producers, but Monta's gaudy scoring numbers get him most of the credit. Monta could definitely be our Joe Johnson, in other words -- a guy who's good enough to play the part of the star, whether or not he's actually your best player.
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