Thank You Monta Ellis

Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash. Of this list of players (which may or may not be an accurate list of the best plaeyrs in the NBA, whether it is or not is irrelevant), who, exactly, is Monta better than?

Eh, the problem is, objectively speaking, there’s a pretty strong case against Monta being as good as you seem to think, at least based on how he’s played the last couple years, and if you’re judging him based on how he helps a team win games. I mean, Curry already scores at a similar rate to Monta (19.7 to 21.5 points per 36), while doing it at an excellent efficiency compared to a below average one for Monta (59% TS% to 53.5%), while racking up more assists (6.2 to 5.0), rebounding more (4.1 to 3.1), and, it seems, playing better D (check out +/- and adjusted +/- for verification). He does all this while taking a backseat to Monta. There are some fair points about what Monta might be with some different circumstances, but in terms of what Monta has brought for us the last couple years? The case is much weaker.

Before you respond, I’d really like you to seriously consider the following facts, and figure out how they can be true while the story you believe is also true:

Monta has the second worst net +/- on the team this year at 8.40. That’s good for 6th worst in the league (unfortunately Biedrins is 2nd worst in the league). Last year he had the very worst +/ in all the NBA at 11.52. Additionally, to try to control for teammate/opponent effects, his 1 year adjusted +/ this year is good for 5th worst in the NBA, and his 2 year adjusted +/- is 15th worst in the NBA. Both are highly negative, providing additional evidence we do worse when Monta is on the court than when he is off. So, consider how the team can play so much better when Monta isn’t on the court than is, and tell me how that can be true, while your story, that he’s been a top 5 SG, is also true?

And that’s the strong case, and I honestly don’t know how it can be explained away. We can talk plenty about Monta (as we have!), but one thing I think is clear – his play has not been effective the last two seasons, at least in terms of winning basketball. It’s not hate, it doesn’t mean I don’t like Monta, it’s simply evaluating him objectively, and trying to understand what makes for a winning basketball team, something we have not been the last two seasons.

Than Muggsy Bogues.

Where a player comes from is less important than where they can go.

I think people that care so much about what others think of their spelling are a bit cowardly.

Yawn

Ultimately, it’s all about winning basketball games.

But that could just be his style of leadership. You may think he takes too many shots but look at Kobe. For the longest time, and even still now, he takes to many shots contested. I am not saying Monta has Kobe’s talent but he is a damn good player. Their way of leadership is kind of similar and their shot selection can be too. So would you have traded a young Kobe with all that potential and miss out on one of the top players in the game? Monta has the talent and that is not easy to find, now it is just getting him to play smart which can be done. It isn’t like he is just out there like Biedrins doing nothing for us. Patience, patience.

I mean Lakers have won titles w/ Kobe as primary ballhandler and derek fisher and ron harper/Brian Shaw at PG. Bulls won it with Jordan/Pippen and such PG greats as Steve Kerr, Ron Harper and John Paxton.

When Miami eventually wins it, I’m willing to bet whoever is there PG won’t be a top 20 Pg.

A bigger guard with good handles could absolutely play next to Monta in a ball movement system with DLee out of the high post and Dwight Howard.

Heck, lets just get Howard and work on it from there.

That simply by playing the most minutes on a bad team (regardless of whether the team is bad because of you or not) you might have the worst +/-

No. That’s not how +/- works. It’s actually kind of puzzling to me that this point gets brought up over and over again. Plus/minus compares how the team did when you were on the court to how the team did when you were not on the court. It doesn’t matter if the team is bad or good, because in both cases, we’re comparing the same teams performance. Playing a lot of minutes on a bad team does not make for a bad net +/-.

Also I could see factors possibly playing into it like resting Monta when the Dubs are far ahead or behind, and in either situation that might have an effect on the stat.

Lots of things could have an effect on the stat. I’d actually theorize that resting Monta when we’re far ahead/behind would make Monta’s +/- look better than it is, for selective sampling reasons. Basically, with our team, we’re going to be “far behind” more often than we’re “far ahead”, and when we’re “far behind”, the chances of our opponent being a really good team increase. So if Monta gets more rest for those minutes, that means he’s going to play less minutes against the really good teams and more minutes against the worse teams. Of course, that’s just a theory, and I believe the proper way to deal with theories like that are to assume they aren’t a factor unless we actually find evidence they are. To test the theory, I would look at his distribution of minutes relative to opponents winning % (or pythag winning%, or however else I want to quantify the strength of the opponent). Or I would just control for teammate/opponent effects, as adjusted +/- (which tells the same story as unadjusted) does.

Sample size for this year is quite small. Over 3000 on court minutes, but only about 600 off court minutes. Combining it with last year, though, brings us to about 5500 on court minutes and a little over 1900 off court minutes. I would like a larger sample size (I always want a larger sample size!), but it’s definitely not small enough to dismiss, especially given the magnitude of his +/- number (in statistics, it’s not only sample size that matters, but a combination of sample size and how far the number is from 0, or whatever else our Ho may be).

What I believe that stat strongly suggests isn’t necessarily that we would win more games without Monta on the team at all, but that Monta has not been effective in the role he’s played over the last two years, and that we do better when he’s not playing than when he is. Now, unless every player that plays on a team is exactly equal in talent, every team must have players like this; these players can help a team win games, so long as Monta’s minutes would go to someone whose play hurts the team more, which I think is likely the case if Monta were not on the team at all.

I bring this up because Moneer wondered how the team would do without Monta. I think this is strong evidence that it wouldn’t hurt us that much</em. It’s certainly something that has to be considered.

Don’t you think That simply by playing the most minutes on a bad team (regardless of whether the team is bad because of you or not) you might have the worst +/-

No, not if you’re talking about net plus/minus.

This has been discussed to death, but playing the most minutes on a bad team does not, on its own, cause a player’s net plus/minus (the difference between how the team does with the player on the court vs how they do when he sits) to be low. A very good player on a bad team may still find his team falling behind when he’s in games, but they’d fall behind even more when he sits. That was the case with Garnett at the end of his time with MIN and has been the case for other very good players stuck with terrible supporting casts. Monta doesn’t fit that pattern. When he sits, the team gets better. And this has been the case for two years. It’s tough to just write it off as sample size any longer. Meanwhile, Dorell, a player who is also high minutes on the same terrible team, does not show the same pattern. The team is better with him in that with him sitting.

The “up” button will tell you which comment it’s responding to.

in what way does it warrant your disrespect?

could you provide an example? I disagree with many things Sleepy says (which is a sign that we’re both thinking), but i’ve never known him to be disrespectful. I don’t think critiquing a player – specifically one making millions of dollars a year to do the thing you’re critiquing – is disrespectful. It’s….well…..critiquing.

it is silly to feel that you should always win in an argument;

I fail to see how they differ from you in this regard. you all have points, and you’re all going to make them. Usually, arguments don’t result in someone winning and someone losing. Sleepy and I, for example, have had dozens of arguments on this forum. With the exception of (i believe) one scenario, no argument has ended in someone saying ‘you win, i lose.’ it usually ends with someone saying ‘i respectfully disagree,’ or words of a similar meaning. The goal of a forum is intellectual discussion; I can firmly say that when I argue with Sleepy, while I rarely if ever feel as though i have ‘won’ or ‘lost,’ I nearly always feel as though my stance has been altered or modified slightly by the intelligent points that he made. I can only hope Sleepy feels the same about my points. There are no Warrior Wonder awards for fans; no win and loss columns for arguments; no keeping score.

ransacking me with analyzed replies

I don’t understand your point here. You appear to be upset at Sleepy and Jae for unnecessarily replying to you, yet you admit to the fact that their posts are analytical which is, well, the purpose of a forum. To use an exceptionally hyperbolic example, if you say that the ocean is blue because the water is that color, and I respond with a thorough post explaining that no, actually the ocean is blue because it is a reflection of light, is that ‘childish,’ ‘silly’ or ‘ransacking’? In my opinion, no.

Again, this is a discussion based forum. This isn’t the comment thread on an ESPN article. If you make a claim, you should do so knowing fully that those who disagree with your claim will dissect it, analyze it, question it, and present their own, independent claim. You can then do the same thing to their claim, alter your own, or simply respect their opinion and agree to disagree.

I apologize for the length of this post, but it seems that this has been a recurring theme recently, and one that should ideally get cleaned up.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop shoveling.

Which is one of the many reasons he should pass much more than he does….