I think he is very good, VERY good at one end of the court and worse than Travis Outlaw on the other end. That isn’t the sort of player who really, really helps you in the long run you need to compensate for him to negate his negative impact. It’s things to consider when you invest the money and keys to a franchise, and his offense overshadows his big negatives.

Of course, he shot over 60% for 1 or 2 months, which is insane for a scoring guard. He can penetrate and score on ANYONE. He is amazing at that.

But, he is dreadful on defense and undersized to boot. Roy does more to help a team win as he does a lot more than score… and if scoring was everything, Melo would be in the Finals right now.

Monta is very young, and could improve on those negatives. I could see him being super-loved right now but when he can’t get his team over the playoff hump, his negatives come to the forefront more… ala Melo.

And Baron? Baron is extremely talented, moreso than Monta overall. Baron could be THE BEST PG in the NBA if he wanted to be. He just doesn’t bring consistent effort or attitude over a 82 game season. He can do everything, and some games he does… and then the next game he moans his way to the bench. He did it twice against us, and that wasn’t the only two times he did it.

So don’t think I’m besmirching the good names and potential of Monta and Baron; I just think Roy is a better leader and all-round player. He’ll never score as much as those two, and I couldn’t care less.

Mortimer

but from what I’ve seen of him, the guy is really, really good. Very soft hands around the basket with very nice footwork and a near-automatic finisher from inside eight feet. His athleticism leaves something to be desired, but he bangs quite a lot by ACB standards. Dunno how the book reads on his toughness compared to Pau. Amlmart?

... the evaluation in Europe is he’s expected to be the better player. He’s a tougher, more agressive version of his older brother. His outtside game is not as good, but he’s supposedly much better inside.

I keep telling folks that it’s still too early to judge the Gasol trade. If Marc comes over and is similar in quality to his brother, then it will be a successful trade for Memphis. They will have acquired a younger, less expensive version of Gasol, shed a large contract and picked up a young, big guard and a draft pick in the process.

And let me preface them with saying that I don’t think Portland has a better backcourt than Golden State. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’d trade our backcourt for theirs, though, cuz I don’t think that Dizzle and Ellis would mesh well with GO and LMA—or Nate for that matter. Just my opinion.

1) Brandon Roy is the unquestioned leader of a team that grossly overachieved this year. I consider this year a success for the Blazers. Ellis was a supporting player on a team that was expected to make the playoffs and didn’t (admittedly because of a historically tough conference). I consider this year a failure for the Warriors, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find too many Warriors fans who would consider it a success. So how is it that you consider team success a feather in Ellis’ cap? Everything is relative.

2) Where did you get these rankings from? If they appeared somewhere above in the thread, I didn’t see them, but sorry if I overlooked them. Fifth-best at what?

3) When you’re comparing two players across two such disparate systems as Golden State’s and Portland’s, the raw per-game numbers don’t mean that much. The Warriors played at the second-fastest pace in the league; the Blazers played at the second-slowest. If you adjust for pace (and unfortunately I can’t find any pace-adjusted individual statistics online - anybody know where to find them?) I’m quite certain that Roy’s 19.1 PPG substantially outweighs Ellis’ 20.2 PPG. Roy’s total rebound percentage is better (percentage of overall missed shots rebounded by X player while he was on the floor) than that of Ellis. Monta’s steal percentage is slightly better than Roy’s, 1.5% to 1.0%, but I’d chalk that up more to the W’s gambling, pressing style of defense (compared to the Blazers, who do…well…neither of those things) than to him being a superior swiper to Roy. Mentioning blocks per game here is a red herring and irrelevant, as neither player accrues sufficient blocks for it to matter. And admittedly Ellis shot a better percentage from the charity stripe than Roy, but it’s 76.7% to 75.3%, barely a difference - and that’s just from last season. Roy is the superior shooter when we compare their brief careers.

Monta is the superior scorer. He shoots a higher percentage from the field and his true shooting percentage is higher to boot. Those aren’t pace-inflated numbers. But you left out that his turnover rate is higher, his usage rate is lower, and he racks up fewer assists on a per-possession and per-game basis than Roy. Considering that a huge part of Roy’s role for the Blazers is as a distributor and not just a scorer, those numbers are both very relevant and very impressive.

Though I gotta say, as I was researching this post, I gained a whole new respect for Ellis’ game. Dude’s got some impressive stats.