Monta Ellis as Mr. Brightside

Here’s a clip of Monta Ellis comparing himself to Dwyane Wade as the Bucks took on the Heat Saturday in Milwaukee.  The Bucks won, 104-85, with Ellis scoring 19 points, distributing nine assists, and thieving five steals. Wade finished with 24 points on 10-of-19 shooting, six rebounds, four assists, and three turnovers.

“To be honest, I would put myself in the same category as D-Wade. At the end of the day, the only thing he have that I don’t have is, you know, more wins and two championships. That’s it. But as far as playing on the same level, competing every night — on both ends — shooting inside, outside, fast break, transition, Monta Ellis have it all.”

The big issue — of course — is the caveat of all caveats.  I mean, really, the only difference between me and David Aldridge is that he gets paid to write about the NBA and can put a coherent sentence together.  Other than that, watching basketball games, thinking about basketball games, reading about basketball games, I have it all.

In fairness to Monta, this frame of mind undoubtedly helps him compete with Wade, who at this point in his career really isn’t much better than Ellis.  Their head-to-head matchups, while not in any way equal, appear to be trending in the right direction for Monta.

For the sake of numerical comparison, here are their career numbers.

It should also be duly noted somewhere that Dwyane Wade has played in ten times as many playoff games as Ellis (110 to 11) and has a semi-permanent impression on his upper thigh of Ramon Sessions’ most sensitive of areas.