Monta Ellis’ first words this season rang of a change that Indiana Pacers fans should be excited to hear.
In his initial campaign, Monta Ellis had what, by the numbers, was probably the worst year of his career since his rookie season.
His shooting percentage was down from his Dallas Mavericks days, his scoring dropped by 5.1 points per game, and he looked like a player on the downslope of his career.
It would not be unusual for a player to put their head down after a season like that, and give the media the old Rasheed Wallace “both teams played hard” type answers to explain their decline.
Monta Ellis is certainly an unusual player, though, and he gave what would seem to be a very honest, very bare interview on the topic of his play through injury last year. He also touched on his off-the-court habits, and his thoughts on turning 30.
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In an article titled, “The Reinvention of Monta Ellis,” Mark Monteith of Pacers.com collected and analyzed some of Monta’s best media day quotes.
"“I rededicated myself this summer in the gym,” he said, sitting at a table on the Bankers Life Fieldhouse floor. “With the team Larry (Bird) put around us, the pieces he brought in, we have a great opportunity here. I have to do better. I have to do a better job of being the person I’ve been throughout my career. Last year was tough. I felt like I let the team down, the organization down, the fans down by not doing what they normally see me do. “It’s a new beginning and I wanted to be part of that.”"
Without making excuses, he also delved into the challenge of getting older.
He says he learned what passing 30 does to a player while watching Baron Davis and Dirk Nowitzki. And now it has happened to him.
"“It hit me the first month of the regular season; that’s when everything started getting bad,” he said. “My knee would just flare up. Some days I’d wake up in the morning and it was tough getting out of bed. I didn’t want to feel that way no more. Last year I went through it the whole season trying to get through it and psych myself up, but it was a struggle. I can’t do the same things I was doing when I was 25. Can’t approach the game the way I did when I was 20 or 25. It gets much harder as you get older. That was a big challenge for me. I wasn’t expecting it; didn’t know how to handle it. But I learned from it, took a lot from it, had to re-evaluate myself, had to rededicate myself, re-fire my love for the game.”"
One of Ellis’s quotes, about what his son Monta, Jr. had to say about his father’s game of late, were especially telling and encouraging.
"“I can see him looking on YouTube, looking at the LeBrons, the Stephs, and those guys, and I felt like he missed those things he saw me do in Golden State. He’d say, Daddy, when you going to get back to doing this or that? I said OK, I had to get back in the gym and rededicate myself.”"
If Monta Ellis can turn back the clock a few years and raise his play to the level it was before last year, it gives this Indiana Pacers team an entirely different dimension.
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Optimism is everyone’s language pre-season, but Paul George certainly believes in Ellis’s revival, and Pacers fans should be hoping against hope that he’s right.