Monta Ellis: Why the Warriors Guard Will Make the NBA All-Star Team This Season

With the twists and turns of the dramatic finish to the NBA lockout and the subsequent whirlwind free-agency period, perhaps the league ended up in some bizarro universe.

Think about it. The Los Angeles Clippers are the talk of the league. The Golden State Warriors are a defensive juggernaut. Oh, and the defending champion Dallas Mavericks, the trendy, sleeper Memphis Grizzlies and the legendary Boston Celtics are all winless.

Even if the NBA labor negotiations ended sooner and league to started on time, it's hard to imagine that December basketball would have been this exciting.

And get this: the regular season is less than a week old.

So, perhaps this season is as good as any for the Warriors to not only think postseason—it would be just their second trip since 1994—but All-Star representation—which would be their first since Latrell Sprewell's 1997 appearance.

Now, to clarify the above paragraphs, this season has been far from flukey.

The Clippers changed the landscape of the Western Conference when they acquired Chris Paul—arguably the best point guard that the league has seen in 20 years—and postseason veterans Chauncey Billups and Caron Butler to complement an already talented roster.

The Warriors reassembled their coaching staff, second unit and front office to change the culture of an organization. New head coach Mark Jackson and assistant Mike Malone have preached accountability and have brought in defensive-minded reserves (Dominic McGuire, Brandon Rush, Kwame Brown and Ish Smith) to force the offensive-minded starters to either play both ends of the floor or find an open seat on the bench.

The Mavericks have undergone an overhaul of their championship roster and had no real training camp or preseason to make the new pieces fit. The Grizzlies ran into perennial conference powers San Antonio and Oklahoma City in their first two contests. And the Celtics have shown both their age and dependence on injured All-Star, Paul Pierce, who has yet to make his season debut.

In the same manner, a Warriors postseason berth or an Ellis sighting in the All-Star game would be anything but a fluke. If the Warriors make the postseason, it will be because they have bought into Jackson and Malone's teachings and become a serviceable defense with the most potent backcourt in the NBA.

Well, that or they traded for Dwight Howard at the deadline. But the safe money is on the defensive embrace.

And it's that defensive embrace—that suffocating, physical defense that the team showed in their 92-78 win over the New York Knicks on Wednesday—that will not only change the culture of the team in the locker room, but also change the way that the Warriors are seen around the league.

It's that new light for the Warriors that would allow Ellis to represent Golden State for the first time in the 2000s. Ellis already has the numbers to justify a spot in the game; in fact, he's had them for a few seasons now.

He's averaged better than 24 points, five assists and two steals in his past two seasons. He's shown a level of comfort in the clutch that few of his peers possess. And he could probably compile a better highlight reel from his three games this season than many others could hope to have in a career.

In other words, he has the numbers for the stat crunchers, the highlights for the ESPN generation and can no longer be regarded as a system player on a gimmick team.

With three members of last year's Western Conference All-Stars out of contention (Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony switched conferences, while fan choice Yao Ming retired), and others at or nearing the wrong side of 35 (Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili), the Western Conference could be loaded with new faces in Orlando.

Ellis has been knocked in year's pasts for putting up great numbers on bad teams. If the Warriors can keep competing with—and defeating—the league's most talented teams, Ellis may have trouble being the only Warrior on the All-Star roster.