Monta Ellis was supposed to be the guy for the Golden State Warriors until he wasn’t. He was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks in the middle of the 2011-12 season for Andrew Bogut, a positional need for the Warriors at the time. Still, the “Mississippi Bullet” stayed grateful to the franchise that gave him his NBA start.
“Man, it changed my family’s life still to this day,” Ellis said on the Out the Mud podcast with Tony Allen and Zach Randolph, referring to the lucrative deal he signed with the Warriors in 2008. “I done went and played for other teams and got other contracts but that contract right there still take care of my families to this day. Them giving me the opportunity when they never seen me work out, they only seen me play on the floor.”
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“I’m an 18-year-old high school kid coming out at 154. They taking the biggest risk of their life,” added the 2007 Most Improved player.
“They took a chance on me”
The speedy Ellis was among several high schoolers who declared for the 2005 draft. It was the last year of eligibility before the Association made it mandatory for players to go to college for at least one season before getting drafted. Martell Webster and Andrew Bynum led the charge as the sixth and 10th picks, respectively. Gerald Green went 18th, while Ellis, Andray Blatche, Amir Johnson, Lou Williams, and CJ Miles slid to the second round.
Monta was the least physically gifted among this crop of high school standouts. He was 6’3, the average size of an NBA point guard, but he was never a pure floor general on the court. As Ellis mentioned, he was a skinny shooting guard in a point guard’s body and never proved himself against elite college competition. Nonetheless, the Warriors rolled the dice on him for the 40th pick and that jump-started his NBA career.
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“They took a chance on me, so I love Golden State. They gave me my opportunity,” Ellis stated.
Ellis averaged 38/8/7 on top of 4.5 steals as a senior at Lanier High School, but the NBA was on a different level. Monta was so physically unready for the big league that he couldn’t even lift a 25-pound dumbbell!
“When I first went to Vegas for Summer League and I had to go in, give you the team, then they do they work out. I got to go to the weight room and everything. I went in there and couldn’t lift a 25-pound dumbbell. Big John (Warriors strength trainer John Murray), I ain’t lying; this is his exact words: ‘Man, we draft this f****** kid, he can’t even pick up 25 pounds,'” Ellis recalled.
Hurting but grateful
Ellis understands the business side of things, but still laments how things went down with the Warriors. According to “Robin,” the Golden State front office told him straight up he won’t be traded, but didn’t keep their word.
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“Heartbreaking,” Ellis described his trade from the Bay Area, per Wes Goldberg of The Mercury News. “It was the turning point of my career because I felt like I was owed the opportunity to know what was happening. And the killer part was I had just talked to them before I left the hotel, and they told me that they weren’t going to trade me.”
Besides the broken promise, Ellis also took offense at how the narrative played out as if he were a locker room disruptor. While the Mississippi native openly said he and Steph Curry couldn’t coexist, he insisted it wasn’t anything personal. It was simply an observation from a roster standpoint and definitely not meant to cause friction with his teammates.
“For them to send me to Milwaukee, it was kind of like they were trying to stick it to me. Like they were trying to hurt me or something,” said Ellis.
Even with the sting of how it ended, Ellis never let it overshadow the connection he built with the fans and the city. The Bay embraced him when he was still a raw teenager trying to find his place, and that loyalty stuck. The cheers at Oracle, the love in the streets, and the sense of belonging all outweighed the business side of basketball.