The 8 greatest Golden State Warriors to never make an All-Star Team

No. 5: Monta Ellis

There is a class of player who focuses on one specific skill and is occasionally mentioned in All-Star discussions because of that skill. These players aren't driving winning like All-Stars are, and often do less to drive winning than less-heralded players, but they get some modicum of recognition because the one stat they focus on is scoring.

Monta Ellis is an elite version of this kind of player, someone who averaged 19.6 points per game in seven seasons with the Warriors but never did much to drive winning. He was a relatively inefficient scorer but was afforded a lot of volume before the rise of Steph Curry drove him out.

To be fair to Ellis, it's not particularly easy to score in the NBA, and he had some dynamic craft with the basketball. He averaged a whopping 25.5 points per game in 2009-10; that ranked sixth in the entire NBA, but it also came on 44.9 percent shooting for a 26-56 team that finished just 14th in offensive rating. Scoring isn't everything.

Ellis received votes to be an All-Star and even a couple of All-NBA teams, but he never made one. That's probably the right outcome for Ellis, but for all of his flaws he was still a talented player who made a lot of young Warriors fans excited to watch basketball.