frankenwolf wrote:shrink wrote:The thing to remember about Monte is that he’s likely the best vet PG .. we can AFFORD.
We spent our payroll to have top players at the SG, PF and C positions. We paid our SF well in a supporting role. This means that a PG in the 23-35 range is expected. The way other teams maximize talent is to find a player who’s on an artificially-lowered salary because of rookie scale, but we don’t have lottery picks, great trade assets for a promising rookie, and we don’t have the time to develop a starting point guard when we want to win now.
Most nights, Monte will be worse than the opposing PG we face, but we’ll often have advantages at three other positions.
My question is, do you think bite-bite is better than the opposing PG most nights? Looking at a ranking from
THE SPORTING NEWS, MC is the 21st best PG in the NBA. A couple above him I have a problem with, but even if I'm right, that still makes him about 18th. (If you are interested, they ranked D'Lo at 26). So then, most nights we are worse off at PG right now. Watching Monte, he provides what Mike does, which is all we want anyway, right? Keeping Monte will (should) allow the FO to either groom a PG that we currently have or draft one.
The problem with ranking is it ignores role. For example, SGA is a great facilitator, but he is expected to score 25+ on any given night. To get those 25+ he is expected to take a large number of shots. The same is true of Brunson or Hali. Mike is capable of being that type of PG when he needs to. But, even shooting 44.5% from deep this season, that just isn’t his role. Mike’s role is to get Ant, Karl, Rudy, and whoever else going and to only really take a handful of shots per game. In fact that handful is so limited that Finch had to tell him to shoot more.
What I love about Mike and Monte is that they are capable shooters who rarely turn the ball over. JMAC is in the same mold, and his shooting is improved this year. But, JMAC lacks the consistency and history that the other PGs have and as a result doesn’t always draw a defender. When our PG draws a defender things get easier for Ant and KAT as doubling or tripling gets much harder.
One final thought on Monte Morris. If he got struck by lightning and became the offensive equivalent of Luka or Hali then he would both be higher usage and outside our price range. While I wouldn’t mind having an all star starting 5, with the new CBA I understand that we cannot truly have that. If we cannot have significant money at the PG, then we don’t necessarily want a high volume scorer at PG. I say this because Jaden is already struggling to get his own shots, and Finch has had to address the fact that there is not more pie for him right now. Mike is struggling to balance his own share of the pie with the offense Finch and the team needs from him. We need Monte to be efficient with the shots he does take, judicious with his shot selection, and an excellent facilitator that makes as few mistakes as possible. So far that is what we have in him. The only issue thus far is his shooting percentage, but that will come with time.