It doesn’t matter how it’s presented, they’re going to keep pushing what they do no matter what. That’s my take. I think if someone says “Keith Smart is a bad coach, and the Brandan Wright trade was bad” they wouldn’t listen. So when someone goes into depth on this issue, it angers them even more.

What is more likely to result in a positive outcome? The guy who busts down the doors screaming at the top of his lungs, or the guy who thoughtfully presents his ideas?

There’s a reason Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, and the Tea Party have become mere cartoons. They go so hard after shock value, try so intently to stir the pot, and attack anyone and everyone with differing opinions, that their own arguments have faded into the background, to the point where they’re just represented by the emotions associated with the reactions to what they have said.

The more offense run through Curry and Reggie the better. If Monta ever left, those guys would be getting more touches.

First of all, we’re actually coming up on a reasonable sample size here – 8 or so minutes a game, over the course of a season, of non-Monta is not nothing. Maybe not enough to make you super confident in his +/-, but it’s not like its non-existent, either.

(And you can’t say that it’s the scrub minutes that Monta isn’t playing, since one of the complaints about Smart’s handling on Monta is how he even seems to be on the floor in the closing minutes of blowouts).

However, there’s a larger point. If you actually look at Monta’s entire stat sheet, you see what adds up to a player who you wouldn’t expect to make you a lot better.

He’s a below-average efficiency player who takes a lot of shots early in the shot clock despite often being on the floor with higher-efficiency players. That’s behavior that you would expect to make your team offense worse, for example – and it’s something we lack confidence about because of sample size. He takes a lot of long two-point shots, the worst shot in basketball. Again, that’s something you would expect to hurt your team, even as it gussies up his PPG.

So you have to weigh any sample size questions you have about his +/- against what the rest of his game tells you: that Monta misses a lot of shots and turns the ball over a lot. That’s completely consistent with the fact that he doesn’t have a large positive impact on our team offense.

And “counting stats” which are inflated by the absurd number of minutes he plays don’t really argue against any of this. Monta has a lot of assists – of all kinds – for a two-guard, yes. Why? Simple: he dominates the ball and plays a ton of minutes.

Given how bad Smart has been, and how we’ve had players who’ve performed worse than reasonable expectations (Lee) and way worse than reasonable expectations (Biedrins) I still see nothing unreasonable about that expectation.

The issue shouldn’t be whether or not the team failed to meet reasonable expectations, at least as far as evaluating an owner is concerned. It should be how the owner responds to the failure to meet reasonable expectations.