Ellis’ defense is red flag for interested teams

Monta Ellis usually had to defend both the league's best shooting guards, including Kobe Bryant, and best point guards. (AP)

The first thing that jumps out when you watch hundreds of clips of the Warriors’ Monta Ellis playing defense is this: It is astounding how much trouble such a good player and such a good athlete has with simple change-of-direction moves. Ellis ranked as one the worst isolation defenders in the league last season, and the tape of his one-on-one defense is an endless reel of brutal crossovers, reckless gambles and spin moves that leave him flailing out of position.

It’s not just Ellis’ penchant for chasing steals that gets him in trouble; remarkably, even marginal players like Gerald Henderson just destroy him on change-of-direction dribble moves when the Golden State guard does his best to play standard one-on-one defense. Scouts and coaches, including former Warriors coach Keith Smart, have noticed these quirks and have various explanations for them.

Those varying explanations hint at why Ellis, the endless subject of trade rumors, is perhaps the most divisive player in the league. He’s either touted as the NBA’s third-best shooting guard, or ripped as a selfish gunner, defensive sieve and all-around team-killer Golden State should look to unload the first chance it gets. Even Ellis’ supporters, including Smart and Warriors general manager Larry Riley, recognize his flaws, and potential trade partners have to ask themselves: Are those issues unique to Golden State, or will they follow Ellis wherever he goes?

Ellis’ allegedly poor defense is at the center of that question. As many have pointed out, the Warriors have been much better defensively with Ellis on the bench for three straight seasons. That statistic has its flaws, especially considering how many minutes Ellis plays (a league-leading 40.3 minutes per game last season), but his critics have a growing pile of evidence that he is fatal to the Warriors’ already-limited defense. Those who have hope for Ellis hold strongly to two caveats:

• The Warriors did not exactly prioritize defense under Don Nelson, who coached Ellis for four years before being replaced by Smart last season. Their transition defense has long been abysmal, Nelson’s wacky lineups didn’t help and Golden State was horrendous defensively in 2008-09, when Ellis played just 25 games.

• Ellis was miscast as the guy charged with defending every opponent’s best perimeter player. Smart clearly did not think Stephen Curry was ready for that kind of challenge, usually leaving Ellis to defend both the league’s best shooting guards (Kobe Bryant, Joe Johnson, Eric Gordon) and the best point guards (Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Steve Nash). Pair Ellis with a more capable defender, and perhaps he can have more “off” nights guarding Marco Belinelli, Raja Bell, Derek Fisher, Kirk Hinrich and Eric Bledsoe.

“Part of his deficiency stems from where he played,” said one scout who has followed Ellis’ career closely. “There was not a lot of time spent teaching the way it should be done. He was not required to defend.”

The hope, according to this scout and others, would be that Ellis becomes a neutral defensive presence on a team with a rigid system and under a coach who holds players accountable to that system.

But, man, those bad habits. Let’s start with the blow-bys. Watch enough of them, and it becomes clear that Ellis suffers from shaky footwork and a defensive stance that is far too upright. Opponents can use his momentum against him, but they often don’t even need to do that because Ellis is almost standing straight up, vulnerable to a speedy drive. Smart said he noticed the same thing and tried to correct it.

“You have to sit down in a saddle, really bend down and slide,” Smart said. “And that comes with having the flexibility to get wide, open up your hips and sit down. I suggested this to Monta and our other guards. It’s about flexibility, focus and stretching.”

Smart cautions that learning this kind of positioning is hard, and not everyone can do it — especially if players haven’t been coached well and forced to perform proper flexibility exercises, something the former coach says he wanted Golden State’s trainers to learn more about.

“I would say to Monta, ‘Keep your arms out wide, sit in that saddle,’ ” Smart said. “But that fatigues your gluts and your hamstrings, and that forces you to stand up.”

Smart, by the way, thinks Ellis is a heady, hard-working defender who has gotten better and generally followed the coaching staff’s instructions. And he was quite successful on pick-and-rolls; opponents averaged just 0.74 points per possession when the ball-handler on a pick-and-roll, guarded by Ellis, finished the play with a shot, drawn foul or turnover, according to Synergy Sports. That put Ellis 42nd in the league among all defenders — an elite ranking.

Smart said Ellis chased the best shooters over picks and tried his best to only go under screens when coaches instructed him to do so, often against so-so shooters. The lack of a shutdown interior defender also hurt because Ellis, like any guard, would fall behind ball-handlers while chasing them over a pick. At that point, it’s the big man’s job to contain penetration, and the Warriors’ big men outside of Ekpe Udoh weren’t much good at that.

But even on pick-and-rolls, Ellis has some habits you rarely see from great defenders. When he goes under a screen, he has a weird tendency to spin off the screener, so that his back is turned to the ball-handler before Ellis meets him on the other side of the pick. The habit leaves Ellis vulnerable to change-of-direction moves because he’s blinding himself to the ball for a second or two. Smart says Ellis claims to have learned the technique from watching Isiah Thomas (on tape) and Derek Fisher, Ellis’ teammate in Golden State in 2005-06.

Then there’s the gambling. Ellis is a serial gambler, and he often kills Golden State’s defense by pursuing steals when he’d be better off holding his ground. Some of this was by design, Smart said. The Warriors understood they were a shaky defensive team with rebounding issues, and so Smart considered turnovers a weapon they could use to tilt the balance back their way a bit. He told his guards not to gamble for steals at the top of the key or near the foul line because a bad bet there could allow an opponent to slice into the heart of the defense. He preferred gambling on the wings and baseline, where it is easier for help defenders to get in position.

“He was 50/50 in terms of doing the right thing,” Smart said of Ellis’ gambling. “It was something that was just so much a part of him, and he does come up with a lot of steals.”

Still, Ellis is too aggressive a gambler and does things that would be unacceptable in Boston, Chicago and other defense-first places. The league knows this, too, as Kobe, Quincy Pondexter, Joe Johnson, Jason Richardson, Grant Hill and others all pulled the same move on Ellis last season. Each player got the ball at the right elbow, dribbled hard to the right, waited for Ellis to reach that way and then spun back to the left for either an open jumper or uncontested drive. Some worked this move multiple times in the same game. Each time, Ellis would reach his way out of position, ending up near the top of the arc while his guy scored, drove or dished for an easy basket.

Part of his tendency to gamble in these situations might be linked to the size disadvantage Ellis faces against shooting guards. It’s a problem NBA people consider his biggest shortcoming as a player — the dreaded “tweener” status. He understands that if those players back him down, he will be in trouble.

Ellis’ height won’t change, but any team interested in dealing for him ask to itself whether his defensive habits might.