Monta Ellis 2K10

Lil' Monta Ellis went the distance on Wednesday for the third straight game... according to ESPN's preview of tomorrow's game, the last NBA player to do that was Allen Iverson, back in April of his rookie year. Monta's a decent bet to go another forty-eight tomorrow, something which "no player has done over the last 23 seasons". Which sounds like an ESPN stat guy's code for "Basketball Reference only has sortable data going back to '86-'87 and I'm not going to dig around just for some filler for a fucking Warriors/Nets preview."

Point is, Monta continues to be a beast. He's leading the league in minutes and turnovers, is second in steals and field-goal attempts, fifth in scoring, and eighth in usage rate (nerdspeak for "hoggin'"). It's almost enough to make you tape two of your fingers together and mime "who me?" while making a Bill Cosby face.

We've discussed his prolific production before, mainly to note that it hasn't actually helped the team very much. That's still largely the case, as our offense ranks below the league average overall. But the subject is worth revisiting nonetheless, and not simply because the young man has become the alpha and omega of this franchise. As the new decade unfolds, Monta Ellis's game is still changing. In particular, there are two striking trends in his January numbers that may portend well for our future.

We touched on the first trend the other day: Monta's passing numbers have noticeably improved. He's averaging 6.6 assists and 3.8 turnovers this month. While the resulting 1.74:1 ratio is still somewhere south of "point guard", it's well north of where he's been, and actually a bit better than Stephen Curry's ratio for the year. And in his last four games, he's averaged 8.0 assists and 3.25 turnovers, for a 2.46:1 ratio. That's some unforgivably thin slicing of the data; still, Monta is currently running our offense with decent efficiency. And while at some point you feel like you're Charlie Brown, Monta's Lucy and his ability to play point guard is the football, you can't help but be intrigued.

The other development is equally intrigung: all of a sudden, Monta is taking threes like nobody's business. He attempted only 1.7 a night in November and 2.1 a night in December, but has launched 4.8 threes per outing in January, and converted them at a credible .349 rate. We like this, not only because teams (especially small ones) profit from shooting more threes and because our offense needed another floor-stretcher in the absence of Maggette's long-distance touch, but because a threatening three-point strike will open up Monta's drives even more.

Monta came into this season surrounded by a swarm of question marks, about his health, his attitude, his defense, his position, his upside. And while he hasn't played in a fashion that has led to wins, it's hard not to be enthused about how many of these questions he's already answered. The guy is clearly healthy and clearly passionate about winning; he seems, at the very least, content to be a Warrior; he's proven himself capable of playing impact defense, even against larger shooting guards. He's even shown us glimmers of a surprisingly polished post game. And now he's showing real progress in the two areas where we'd all more or less given up on him.

This isn't supposed to happen. You're not supposed to be able to dramatically improve your playmaking after years of failure, or develop a three-point shot in midseason. And maybe this isn't happening... maybe these are just statistical flukes, and Monta will soon revert back to normal.

But Monta's season has been anything but normal, so it's hard not to dream on this stuff a little. Because a Monta Ellis with point guard ability and a solid three-point stroke would actually be worthy of the All-Star talk that's been buzzing around him; a Monta Ellis like that would actually be one of the twenty best players in the league. It's impossible to know what his true potential is right now, and we probably won't be able to find out until we get a different coach in here. But his recent play hints that he may have even more potential than we've been thinking. And in a dark season, that's a bright thought, indeed.