For a team lacking 3 point shooting and defense, it is confounding that Ellis is not playing consistent minutes every game. He is not without his faults, but his strengths are literally the two things we are missing the most.
Can we please start this stud? Monk back to 6th man. Encouraging to see Christie give him run during the late 4th.
Agreed. Brown's move to start Monk was either a Hail Mary desperation move or a move forced by McNair. Either way, it makes more sense to play Monk at his best position - 6th man.
Kings made a late run last year after having Keon in the lineup where we moved from bottom in defensive rating to Top 10. Yet we chose to conveniently forget about it and rediscover it sometimes.Keon was fantastic tonight. If we are to turn this season around, Keon Ellis WILL BE a big reason why.
Might be too early to worry about this, but will Keon be a restricted free agent when his contract is up? Not too familiar with what contracts for former 2-way players look like..
Thanks for quoting - and apologies, should have checked the full thread first!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.”
Thanks for quoting - and apologies, should have checked the full thread first!![]()
Yup, it is for sure. So it seems very likely we will decline the team option for next season and match whatever offer he gets, or at least I hope so!no worries, the post was from April. I just remembered it being a good explanation
Kings made a late run last year after having Keon in the lineup where we moved from bottom in defensive rating to Top 10. Yet we chose to conveniently forget about it and rediscover it sometimes.
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.The fans did not forget, it was Coach Brown who "chose to conveniently forget." I was ranting and raving here about Keon's lack of playing time in the weeks leading up to the firing.
Maybe coaches should listen to the fans every now and then?
The fans did not forget, it was Coach Brown who "chose to conveniently forget." I was ranting and raving here about Keon's lack of playing time in the weeks leading up to the firing.
Maybe coaches should listen to the fans every now and then?
Kids, respect your elders!Someone need to make Keon aware of his new head coaches 4 All-Defensive team awards. One on the 1st team, three on the 2nd team.
Until Keon can accomplish any of that, yes, his coach does have bragging rights as to being the superior defender.![]()
Kids, respect your elders!
Rotate 2 of Keon/DC/Keegan with 3 offensive hubs (Domas/Fox/Monk/DDR) and we'll see some truly gaudy 5-man lineup data start to pop. Really believe in that.