Malik Monk had nineteen points in the fourth quarter of this game. That’s a good thing.
Malik Monk also played the entire fourth quarter, and during that time, the Clippers scored 42 points. That’s a bad thing.
I think those two statements, when combined, form the essence of Monk. He can score, but he’s not a great defender. That’s why his minutes were so inconsistent last season – coach Clifford wanted Monk to show more on defense, but he never really did. It also doesn’t help that Monk’s not a consistent scorer, so there will be games when he’s giving you neither offense nor defense. That’s not the type of player you want in games for you when you’re making a run at that seventh playoff seed.
There are a lot of things I would do with a time machine (including attempting to repair my fractured relationship with Jennifer), but one of them would be to stick Monk back into the NBA of 2005, when low-efficiency scoring machines were all the rage. Back then, coaches didn’t care if your field goal percentage sucked. It didn’t matter how many shot attempts it took you to get your 20 PPG. If you could do it, you went out there and did it. That’s about the lamest possible thing one could do with a time machine, but I would do it.
The absolute lamest thing would be to go back in time to prevent the time machine from being invented. Who knows what would happen to the timeline then.