After watching the Golden State Warriors lose to the Phoenix Suns on Thursday, which happened to be their eighth loss in the past ten games, it has become clear that this team is not even a .500 team as currently constructed. With new owners, Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, now officially on the clock and ready to make a splash what is the best way for them to go about putting together a legit contender? The first thing that they will need to figure out is whether Monta Ellis should be part of the team going forward or should he be used along with the $17 million in expiring contracts to make some trades that will make this team better.
Fans love Monta Ellis. He is exciting to watch as he blows by defenses with his speed and together with Stephen Curry as a backcourt they can put up some serious offensive numbers. But if you are building a championship team that is not the kind of backcourt you want. Two guys who barely register at six feet tall and cannot play defense is not the way you go about winning titles. Either Ellis or Curry is going to have to be traded.
As great as Ellis is he does not make the players around him better. Some scouts believe that he is a poor man’s Allen Iverson in the sense that he could win scoring titles and win you games but he does not make other players around him better. Ellis seemingly always needs the ball in his hand to succeed and that doesn’t work with a protypical point guard. The Warriors could look to move Ellis to the point, again, but he is not much of a distributor and tends to like to dribble the air out of the ball. He would be much better on a team like the Suns or Knicks where they already have an establish point guard and a good front court and they also like to run up and down the court.
The other option is that they look to move Stephen Curry. This is less likely to happen because point guards are as easily replaced as shooting guards and Curry has proven he can be a top guard in the NBA. Whether he will turn out to be the “next Steve Nash” like Don Nelson thought is another story. If the Warriors were to move Curry it would have to be for a bigger body point guard like they had in Baron Davis. Unfortunately, those types of point guards don’t grow on trees. Deron Williams would be a nice fit but the Utah Jazz isn’t letting him go anytime soon.
It seems that the likely option is that Ellis will be traded based on the fact that he plays a position, shooting guard, that is easily replaced and he will likely net the Warriors back the most talent. If Ellis continues on the path he is going on right now (24.9 ppg), his value will be extremely high come the trade deadline and I would fully expect the Warriors to be looking to trade him along with their expiring contracts for a legit star to put next to Curry.
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