It has been nearly a decade since the Warriors changed the course of their franchise and traded Monta Ellis away for Andrew Bogut. Ellis joined 95.7 The Game’s “Steiny & Guru” Friday for a long and entertaining interview about his days with Golden State, his NBA aspirations and more. Listen to the full interview below:
Nine years ago, Ellis was an explosive 27-year-old guard for Golden State and a fan favorite, but created a small backcourt with emerging franchise centerpiece Stephen Curry. Initially, the Monta-Bogut trade wasn’t a popular move with many fans, though the big man eventually came to anchor the first two title-winning teams of the Warriors dynasty in 2015 and 2016.
Ellis revealed further details surrounding that fateful day of the trade on March 13, 2012 – when he was shipped to the Milwaukee Bucks with Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown for Bogut and Stephen Jackson. Ellis said he had a conversation with Warriors brass the day he got traded, who assured him they’d like to keep him and make a run at the No. 8 seed. At the time, the Warriors were 17-21 and 4.5 games out of the eight spot.
“They told me they wasn’t going to trade me,” Ellis said. “They was going to ride with it and I was ‘OK, cool’ with it. Then from that phone call, leaving the hotel, like 30 minutes from that phone call, I get to the gym and got traded. They never told me, my agent or nobody. One of my teammates told me on ESPN. It was something that we had talked about, but also we had came to an agreement that we weren’t going to do it. Then the way they did it was, it was messed up. At the end of the day, it had to be done. It worked out for the best for them.”
Six days after the trade, Warriors owner Joe Lacob was booed unmercifully by the Oracle Arena crowd at halfcourt of a game during Chris Mullin’s jersey retirement ceremony. While many were irked that the Warriors were planning to leave Oakland and that Lacob took the last word on Mullin’s big night, the discontent with the Ellis trade was also a big factor. It got so bad that Mullin and Warriors legend Rick Barry eventually had to do some damage control.
Ellis said he was with his family were in a hotel room watching when Lacob started hearing it from the Warriors fans in Oakland.
“It was crazy,” Ellis said. “I was laughing, like, he deserved it. At the end of the day, it’s something that happened unfortunately, but at the end of the day, we go back and look at it now, he didn’t make a bad move. It wasn’t so bad. They got over it really quick. It was a good, funny moment.”
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Ellis also said that veteran forward David Lee may have influenced the decision’s thinking in the trade.
“Even with that, David Lee, he played a part in that,” Ellis said. “He made it seem like he was mad, but he wasn’t mad. He knew everything that was going on, how it was going down. He was a part of it. He can make a scene like he was mad or upset about it, but he wasn’t. He had his hands in it and he played a part in it.”
