Sixers bargain bin free agent targets: Malik Monk
Not long ago, Malik Monk was the most electric player in college basketball. He was billed as the next star guard out of Kentucky — a whizz scorer with unlimited range and equally unbound confidence. The shine has worn off in the NBA, but at 23 years old, he’s not a lost cause. Monk is now an unrestricted free agent, and the kind of low-risk gamble that could pay massive dividends for Philadelphia.
Monk is still very much a bucket. Perhaps a little more rough around the edges than evaluators expected coming out of Kentucky, but a bucket nonetheless. Monk just posted the best season of his young career, posting 11.7 points per game. The Sixers need volume shooters, and Monk averaged 8.7 attempts per 36 minutes from 3-point range, hitting them at a 40.1 percent clip.
That is a legitimate NBA skill. A player who can hit 3s at that volume would benefit just about every team, not to mention the Embiid-led Sixers, who could lose both Danny Green and Furkan Korkmaz in free agency. The Sixers can only afford so many small guards, but Monk improved drastically as a defender last season. He was, for the first time, playable on a regular basis.
The Hornets buried Monk under a mountain of high-volume guards, from LaMelo Ball and Devonte’ Graham, to Terry Rozier and Gordon Hayward. The Sixers have no such depth chart, with mostly unproven youngsters or wayward veterans in the second unit. There’s a real window of opportunity for a player who can fill it up like Monk. Especially if he comes on a minimum contract.