• Ray Ratto thinx Monta shoots 2 much. Ray Ratto is a bit of a boob. On the other hand, Monta is shooting too much, and Ratto is the most high-profile Bay Area journalist to acknowledge that so far. It'll be interesting to see if either Monta or Nellie deems this worthy of a response.
• A John Hollinger chat from yesterday... he scoffs at the idea that Monta is All-Star material, for the same reasons we've been mentioning. As with Ratto, however, Hollinger does not acknowledge the role of coaching apathy in Monta's inefficient, gunnin' ways.
• In BBP's latest Prospectus Hoops List, we rank 27th. Bradford Doolittle thinks Curry should get the ball more, and to his credit, he does implicate coaching as a problem here, if only obliquely. But Doolittle's ode to Curry's crossover move betrays his college-centric eye for the pro game. Monta's not stopping Stephen Curry from beating defenders. Defenders are stopping Stephen Curry from beating defenders.
• Speaking of which, the Bay Area Sports Guy thinks some people (including us) are giving Steph Curry short shrift; he makes good points about potentially unfair perceptions of the kid relating to his looks, his favored status with Nellie, his reaction to our drafting him, etc. For my part, I can only say that I don't blame Curry for being overhyped, and I don't begrudge his prettyboy looks, GQ column, or ambivalence about becoming a Warrior. I like him, and I think he'll be a good player for us. I just don't think he shows much potential as an NBA point guard.
• A fun blog post from Neil Paine at Basketball Reference, listing each team's minute-weighted age, height and weight. We've only fielded the seventh-youngest lineups in the NBA -- the Thunder, Kings, Wolves, Grizzlies, Raptors (!) and Nets have been younger -- but our lineups have been the league's shortest and lightest by far. The average on-court Warrior has weighed just 204 pounds this season, while every other team's average on-court player has weighed 212 or more. (Needless to say, this has worked out fabulously for us.)
• Finally, more Curry/Monta discussion over at GSOM, prompted by a pro-Curry post by a member who goes by (ironically) monta.da.boss. Gets into some specifics that we haven't really delved into over here, including the critical point -- stated well by a fella named Missing Barry -- that Curry's lack of athleticism threatens to prevent his being a capable playmaker, no matter how good his passing eye is or isn't.
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3 comments:
Athleticism helps if you want to be a great NBA point guard, but IQ, footwork and fundamentals are even more important. (Case in point: you've never seen Steve Nash dunk, and Curry is already a better defender than Nash has ever been...not that that's saying much, but Curry's definitely stronger and tougher than he looks.)
Curry's only been playing PG for two years now, and he has the task of making an awful team better. The fact that every week HE is getting better, especially considering his current situation (D-league teammates, comatose coach, etc.) should give everyone hope.
Curry is probably a better athlete than Nash, but Nash has a vastly better *handle* than Curry. Even if Nash's top speed isn't great, he can dribble and slash at that top speed without losing control, which most players can't... that allows Nash to get himself, and by extension others, open. We can't reasonably expect Curry to develop Nash's hands, and unless he does, he'll never equal Nash's effective speed.
Really, Nash is a complete basketball anomaly, and I'm not comfortable comparing Curry or anyone else to him. It's too easy to get dreamy-eyed over a struggling young guy by telling yourself that Nash struggled early on, too. No player, *ever*, has had a career path quite like his. And even given that, he passed a helluva lot better as a rookie than Curry.
Also, it'd be more accurate to say that Curry's only been playing PG *again* for two years now; he played the position all the way through high school. And he's a smart kid -- he's known all along that someone as small as him would probably have to play the point well to make it in the NBA. Curry has said as much in interviews, and expressed confidence in his ability to do it.
But he's not doing it well. And while there's certainly no disputing that this team is a mess, I'm not convinced that it's a mess of a sort that would make effective passing impossible. We have a number of efficient weapons to pass to... many Warriors boast good passing numbers for their positions.
Curry can shoot off the catch like nobody's business, and he can create in transition when he has space to maneuver, but in when he has the ball in the halfcourt, he's getting swallowed up. He's just flat-out struggling to get by his man, which makes both shooting and passing very difficult. And while he may solve that problem, I'm not exactly sure how he's going to. Even if he has the brilliant basketball mind people claim, the body has to, on some level, be able to execute.
I don't remember Nash being that impressive in the beginning of his NBA career. He was more an opportunistic scorer who could get hot and make a fancy pass from time to time, not somebody with the best handle in the league.
But you make a lot of good points on Curry, including the part about speed when he's close to an opponent. I think that's also evident when he's defending players, which may account for his extremely high foul rate.
I don't think people are born with handles, though. It helps to have a certain body type (quick, flexible, lower to the ground), but ball-handling can be improved through hard work, as can speed.
I've seen Monta do some amazing things this year, but I've seen him do some ridiculously stupid things with the ball as well. The future of this team just makes more sense with Curry at the 1 and Monta at the 2.
So you have to live with Curry's shortcomings as a rookie, let him learn on the job (because while he may have played PG in high school, you can probably assume he could do whatever he wanted and he probably spent most of his time bombing 3's and going coast-to-coast...he's still learning the position) and hope he'll work his ass off during the off-season. That Curry trained before this season with Idan Ravin before the draft was a good sign, let's hope he goes at it just as hard after this season.
Because Steve Nash wasn't some alien who was placed here with weird hair and pointy ears to play point guard. Like every superstar, he worked his ass off, so much so that he may have improved more than any player in the history of the NBA from his first to his fifth year. If Curry has half the work ethic of Nash, he could be a franchise cornerstone as well. If he doesn't, he'll probably become a decent scorer off the bench. It's his decision.
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