Dr. Spaceman wrote:BayAreaHoopz wrote:GSW Hoops Fan wrote:Ellis is the best player on our team by far. Remove him from the team we would have been fighting the Wolves for #1 draft spot. .
And that just might be the problem. Since Ellis has become this team's best player, they've won 29, 26 and 36 games. Sure, he missed that 29 win season, at least the majority of it, but he was still getting paid right? As a business, you have to take that into consideration unless you like throwing away $11M. Interesting that they won 29 games without him and then 26 with him. Doesn't that confuse you just a little?
He has missed 19 games in the last two season. The Warriors have 8 wins and 11 losses in those 19 games. Not great, but not exactly Minnesota bad considering he did it with guys like Reggie Williams, Anthony Tolliver, Corey Maggette and Ronnie Turiaf. You take the games that Ellis did play, which is 145 games in the last two seasons...57 wins and 88 losses.
Don't just take those facts as a way to scapegoat Monta. In that season they won 29 games the team had Stephen Jackson and Jamal Crawford, both of which although no always efficiently, have shown that they have the talent to get a team around 29 wins. That team also actually had a bench that could score too, and it's best option for such wasn't Reggie Williams. Also if I'm not mistaken the Lakers had a pretty damn good record with Kobe out of the lineup last year. Does that mean they were a better team without one of the greatest SGs of all time? HELL NO!
Last year with our most injuries in franchise history and his second best player by far being a rookie we only lost 3 more games than the year before. If you do the math correctly, it wasn't the addition of Monta that made the team lose 3 more games. Monta and Curry prevented the team from being worse than the Nets.
This year we won 10 more games, and with him as the leader and showed more toughness than we have in years during certain stretches (Nothing great, but we had a few streaks of holding quality opponents to less than 100 points. And won more than a few games where we scored less than 100 points. Something we never would have done in the past few years. Now I can't credit this all to Monta, since offseason additions and a coaching change helped in that regard, but those are the signs of growth you want from a young team.
Last time I checked he was not getting posted up every game, so his height and weight shouldn't be considered a huge factor. Add this to the fact that our backcourt constantly outperformed other teams backcourts throughout the year. What we need to improve upon is our defensive rotations down low, as we constantly get outshot at the foul line and send our best bigs to the bench for undisciplined (partly due to our reputation) forcing us to play undersized a majority of the time. Combine that with the fact that putting others on the line and slowing it down takes away a huge advantage we try to gain over other teams by forcing the tempo. This is why we need a legitimate defensive coach, who runs a defensive system that has proven to work in the NBA. Oh yeah drafting a legit SF so we can bring in Wright off the bench, along with improving the bench should help a lot too.
Who are the Warriors going to get to be a defense force in the key? Their money mostly in David lee, Monta, and AB and none of them are defensive presence. If they want a defensive center or PF they need to pay at least 11 mill per year to get that one player in FA market. They are not going to draft a big man to play defensive center, because it takes a long time to develop one to play in the NBA. Unless they find a gem in draft who can play defense in Center spot right away, but those are very rare. Lacob wants to win now so he going to the FA to get the big man, but with the new CBA will Lacob have enough money to get the Big center against other team who will be wanting the Centers service? Monta been on this team for awhile now and as his role increase the team hasn't been winning. He is not a great player because his skill set does not offset the team weakness to produce more wins for this team. Look get 10 wins is not a big deal coming from 26-36 not to me, because we have seen it before for awhile now. I will be impress if the team goes to near mid 40s and above in the West in the coming season. You can get a coach to preach defense philosophy, but in the end it the players who actually playing defense and I don't know if any player on this roster who can play that tough and smart defense.
