Monta Ellis’ moped accident was one of the more notorious injuries in recent NBA history, and now he is providing his side of the story over a decade later.
Speaking this week with Wes Goldberg of The Mercury News, the ex-Golden State Warriors guard addressed the 2008 incident where he got into a moped accident and then lied to the team, saying he hurt himself playing basketball.
“I was a young kid, had just signed the biggest deal of my life,” said Ellis, now 34. “So that was my biggest thing was to be like, ‘Man, I got to try to make it something basketball-related.’ So, I panicked. I said what I said. But then after I did that, I came back and I told them exactly what happened. I admitted it.
“I said ‘I’ll give you $2.5 [million] back from the contract that I just signed,'” he added. “So they suspended me for 57 games that they already knew I was going to miss anyway just so they could get another $500,000 so it could be $3 million versus [$2.5 million]. And so that’s when our relationship turned.”
Goldberg notes that Ellis, who last played in the NBA in 2017, was actually suspended by the Warriors for 30 games but missed 57 due to the ankle injury that he sustained in the accident. The contract in question was a six-year, $66 million that he signed in June of that year before getting injured in August.
Ellis’ accident was quite the viral story even back then, but he went on to post many more quality seasons of 20-plus points per game after that. With very few mopeds left on the road these days however, the infamy of the incident will probably live on for a while longer.
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