Monta Ellis has 24 points on 9-17 shooting, but oddly has only made 1 out of his last 5 shots. But, this doesn’t mean Ellis hasn’t been able to get to any shot he’s wanted to on the court. From any spots on the court, Ellis looks as if he could get to the hoop with each shot more circusy than the next.
At half when Rich Bucher interviewed Monta Ellis (with lots of awkward camera shots of the Oracle hallways), Ellis replied (and I am paraphrasing), “they don’t really know what to do with me.” And later, Ellis humbly said (paraphrasing) that he owed it to his teammates “setting great screens.”
This was all after ESPN color commentator Fran Fraschilla said that Ellis was considered “selfish” earlier in his career. I think we could all agree he had his Kobe Bryant moment when Kobe took over the Lakers without Shaq.
But you can bet the Trailblazers will make adjustments at halftime to shut down Ellis the same way the Warriors figured that they needed to body up Andre Miller with Rodney Carney and not the currently defensively vulnerable Stephen Curry.
Both Carney and Ekpe Udoh have been offensively negligible so far (2 points between them). But both of them have been solid defensively in the second half. Udoh in particularly prevented the Trailblazer bigs from getting easy second chance points in the paint, which Louis Amundson, Dorell Wright, and David Lee have struggled to do. As mentioned in earlier, Udoh had two blocks within one possession, the lone interior presence that made Blazer bigs think twice about going up in the paint.
Wesley Matthews leads the Blazers with 11 points and Andre Miller has 10 points and 7 assists so far. Stephen Curry already has 8 assists in just 15 minutes.
UPDATE: Trailblazers have 30 rebounds, Warriors 11