I would like to apologize to Steve Clifford. I treated him unfairly, thinking that he was blatantly holding down Malik Monk (who I perceived to be a grade-A talent) to further his own nefarious goals of promoting Julyan Stone (the Chris Paul stopper). I was mad on all of Charlotte’s behalf, struggling to understand why a supposedly NBA-level coach would give Monk only 13 minutes per game. Any and all hurtful nicknames I gave him, I would especially like to apologize for.
In the end, he probably was holding down Monk a bit. But just a bit. It seemed to me that Monk had the ability to flourish in the NBA more than he is actually able to. He’s gotten better this year, by a fair amount, but a new coach did not “unleash the beast”, so to speak. It’s possible that this new coach, this Borrego fellow, is also holding him down and Monk needs either another new coach or a trade to a new city (like Milwaukee for Thon Maker) to REALLY be unleashed.
I mean, he is scoring like 20 points per 36 minutes. That means if he got real minutes like a starter would get, he’d average 20 points per game. Which is a lot. That’s a number that only good players get to average except for Mike James.