The Hornets are tanking this year, right? They’re 2-3 as of right now, but their point differential is in the toilet and I don’t see it getting better any time soon. Since we’re in agreement that the Hornets are done competing for the eighth seed, then there seems to be no reason that Malik Monk shouldn’t be getting molded into the franchise’s shooting guard of the future.
For the past two years Monk has played a minimal off-the-bench role that has fluctuated between “gets twenty minutes” and “gets a DNP-CD”. For some reason, a team with winning aspirations like the Hornets didn’t think that their throwback scoring-first shooting guard was going to actually contribute to wins. That may have been true, but now the “contribute to wins” is no longer a factor. Coaching can still hate his guts, but the rationale for the guts-hating is moot.
If you gave him the green light right now, Monk would probably score twenty points per game. His efficiency numbers would be unsightly and old-time viewers would probably get Jerry Stackhouse flashbacks, but twenty PPG per game would be totally doable. This could be just like that time that Tony Wroten was basically a twenty PPG per game scorer for the 76ers that one year before he got injured and was never heard from again.