Glad I didn’t watch this one
With the wrist injury, he shouldn’t have played that minute. Hope it’s nothing serious or lingering. Hayward’s hand has to be an issue as well. His shot looks off to me.
Sorry zig, but screw that. “Bring his own confidence”. Hard to do that when he doesn’t get the correct consistent minutes and a Martin is being picked off the bench first. Edit: Sorry man, I just hate those generic “coach speak” phrases, they tend to be pretty empty and avoidant.
He looked pretty confident to me when he was getting consistent minutes and hitting the game winner in Sacramento.
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That’s exactly what how I feel. I’m not sure it’s a confidence issue but an issue where he knows if he does something wrong, JB will bench him. He’s a better offensive player than Graham but always has to take a back seat to him and I don’t understand it. Monk needs the ball in his hands. I have no doubt, we’d be a better team with him getting more minutes.
Not sure if everyone stayed up late to watch this garbage, I had it on because I was watching Abilene Christian take down Texas.
But there are pretty easy reasons for all the concerns. Ball hurt his wrist/thumb pretty bad. He was clearly holding it after every shot, and even though he’s a one handed passer, he was clearly throwing just left handed passes and dribbling mostly with his left. Even had an extremely weird scoop shot that he could’ve hit with his right, but swung it back to his left. As a coach, I sure wouldn’t risk any further injury during a blowout, especially with 2 finally winnable games coming up.
For Monk, this is just a bad matchup for him. Between Kawhi and Paul George, and Marcus Morris and even Batum, Monk’s giving up like 5 inches or so to each. Cody Martin is our best perimeter defender by far, so of course he’d get the most minutes. I know we suck on d anyway, and Cody can’t score, but just about every coach in the league is making that same move. Replace JB with any new guy, Cody is gonna play more this game.
And Graham would of course play more since Ball was hurt and he’s the only true backup point guard. I don’t think Monk’s confidence is hurt at all, he’s a professional in his fourth year who has matured before our eyes. If this matchup issue can dent someones confidence, then they wouldn’t be long for the league anyway. He’s fine.
Still don’t know why we waited to put Carey in til 4 minutes left though. I have no explanation for not getting Nick and Vern some playing time in a blowout. Biz is not the future, and he’s not gonna lead a comeback. Makes no sense to me.
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I don’t think Monk seeing less court time was entirely matchup based. He’s not been consistently effective for 5-6 games now. I’m not rooting against him, just seems to be the case. I don’t think he’s lacking for confidence but do challenge that the time given plays a part in that.
Here’s my take, and I hope no one is offended by this comment. Not my intention. I think we all have our favorite guys and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But I do think it can be really easy to develop blind spots for the weaknesses of the guys we like, and that bias can also cause us to be dismissive of the attributes of the guys that don’t have favored status with us.
Regarding Monk, he’s a great scorer, but he’s a bit of a one trick pony. If he’s hot, he’s great, but if he’s not hitting shots, he doesn’t bring a ton else to the table. The Martins, particularly Cody, have a limited ceiling offensively. Neither possesses the offensive ability of Malik, but they have made defense their calling card and love them or hate them, it’s hard to deny that they impact the game positively on that end of the floor with their effort. Devonte is a bit more inconsistent offensively, but is as good as anyone when he’s on. But even when he’s not, he can still have a positive impact with his playmaking ability. But on the other side of the ledger, he’s a liability on the defensive end. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but objectively, they certainly all have value.
There’s no question that when everyone is healthy, we have a log jam in our backcourt and these guys are fighting each other for minutes. A rotation of 10 guys is really not conducive to any second unit guy getting enough minutes to find their rhythm. As fans, it’s frustrating when we feel like “our guy” isn’t getting a chance to show what he could really do if JB would just wake up and realize that they’re the solution to our problems. But each of these guys has limitations, which is why they’re coming off the bench in the first place. I agree with Zig that it’s on them to give JB a reason to feel like he has no choice but to play them more than the next guy.
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Just checked, you’re right about the last 5-6 games, they line up right up when Devonte returned to lineup. Monk averaged over 25 minutes while graham was out and was doing great, but has dropped back down into the teens now that graham is getting 18-20 minutes per game.
I still don’t think he would’ve played as much against the clippers barring him coming out on fire. But since Devonte is the backup PG, I guess there will always be a logjam of minutes, and Malik probably won’t get over 20 minutes except in games where he’s on fire.
What’ll be interesting is to see who they choose to keep between them in the offseason. They both bring something different and needed to the team, but obviously don’t have enough time or money with them and Terry and ball.
I just want our G-League guys to at least get solid playing time in games where it is obvious we have no chance of coming back from a huge deficit. It sure as heck can’t hurt anything!