Charlotte Hornets: The defensive dynamism of Malik Monk
By James Bu
On-ball defense
As mentioned above, Malik wasn’t really tasked with defending pick-and-roll guards very often this past season. Instead, it was mostly Terry Rozier, and Devonte’ Graham tasked with these responsibilities, more so, due to a lack of quality defensive personnel on the Hornets than anything.
On rare occasions, Monk had to guard a smaller guard, Monk’s defense was inconsistent due to his suboptimal ability to navigate ball-screens defending the pick and roll.
At times Malik would fight over screens very well, recovering promptly in front of his man or challenging pull-up jumpers well from behind. However, too often, he just didn’t manage to recover in front of the ballhandler, leading to opponents getting easy advantage from ball-screen actions.
Since Malik has elite lateral quickness(10.34 second lane agility time as a Kentucky freshman) and very flexible hips, he generally doesn’t have trouble containing slashers, such as Brogdon, Carter-Williams, Sexton, Exum, and Mudiay.
Malik’s post defense is passable for a 6’2″ guard. His increased strength and ability to challenge vertically means he generally prevents opponents from easy uncontested shots, but Monk’s size is still a limiting factor. For every good defensive possession, he has in the post(none of the below plays are fouls Tommy).
There is a possession like this(where he gives up a 3 point play to Smart).
When Monk puts it all together as an on-ball defender, possessions like the one below will naturally occur more frequently; in this play, he slid his feet with his namesake Malik(Beasley, notice the quick hip-turn) before absorbing a bump and smothering a hook shot, but that was followed up with a great block from behind on Juancho.
John Calipari believes Malik can guard 1s, 2s, and 3s in the NBA, and possessions like the above one show Malik’s potential to be a stifling isolation defender.