Keon Tyrese Ellis
- Thread starter Tetsujin
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He pretty much said it was a Hail Mary. Mike has consistently said Monk’s best role was as a sixth man. Even when half the fan base and kings media were calling for Monk to start he maintained that “you usually don’t start your five best players” giving Ginobli as an example. He also said once you pull that lever you have no where to go next and… now he is riding his motorcycle instead of coaching.
It might not be the starting that's the issue, it's probably the finishing and the number of minutes per game. Monk has entire months where he should be playing 40 mpg, and others where he should be playing around 20. And the up and down monthes are usually split about even throughout the year. That's the life of a streaky volume combo guard with no real defensive/role player qualities. The Kings running all that offense at the end of games is basically going to work if they are indeed the most talented starting 5 in the league. That's certainly a question mark as to if they are along with whether or not you can pretty much give up in those minutes up on the defensive side. Looking at the top teams, no, you can't just run all offense anymore. Not in the playoffs where the game slows down.
Captain explained this well on the first page of this thread. Copy and pasted below:
“OK, so this is actually tricky.
We had Keon on a Two-Way last year. We have him currently on a two-year deal with a team option for a third year. Since Keon did play in the NBA (16 games) last season, he established a year of service time. This year is year two of service time. Next year is year three of service time.
The team option year would be year four of service time. After that season, Keon would be an UNRESTRICTED free agent, because only players with three years of service time or less, or players coming off of a first-round rookie contract can be restricted. Keon would not qualify.
That means that if we want to make Keon a restricted free agent, we have to DECLINE the third year option, and let him enter free agency in the summer of '25.
Since Two-Way deals DO count for Bird Rights, we would have Keon's Bird Rights if we declined the team option.
So things could get very interesting, with the Kings possibly declining the option for year three in order to ensure that they can resign Ellis as both an RFA and with no effective cap restrictions.”
“OK, so this is actually tricky.
We had Keon on a Two-Way last year. We have him currently on a two-year deal with a team option for a third year. Since Keon did play in the NBA (16 games) last season, he established a year of service time. This year is year two of service time. Next year is year three of service time.
The team option year would be year four of service time. After that season, Keon would be an UNRESTRICTED free agent, because only players with three years of service time or less, or players coming off of a first-round rookie contract can be restricted. Keon would not qualify.
That means that if we want to make Keon a restricted free agent, we have to DECLINE the third year option, and let him enter free agency in the summer of '25.
Since Two-Way deals DO count for Bird Rights, we would have Keon's Bird Rights if we declined the team option.
So things could get very interesting, with the Kings possibly declining the option for year three in order to ensure that they can resign Ellis as both an RFA and with no effective cap restrictions.”
I meant to use "we" and "us" to refer to the Kings. There was stark contrast in metrics when comparing lineups with and without Keon all the way back to late last season. The W-L record doesn't lie. The fact that we went away from what has actually proven to work was frustrating. You build upon these things to advance the baseline and "stack up" on top of this improved foundation to progress further. Not learning from our little successes and failures lead to us trying to "search for" things that work and iterate through the same mistakes over and over again. Doug Christie seems to be more receptive and open to make changes with a good pulse for the game. Better days are ahead.
