Nearly two months ago, Greg Monroe was a DNP-CD in one of his first games as a Celtic. He was the odd-man out while battling Daniel Theis, Aron Baynes and a deep Boston bench for minutes.
On Friday night, he was the focal point of the Celtics’ offense.
The center finished with 19 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists for his second career triple-double against the Bulls, carrying the Celtics to a 111-104 win in a relatively meaningless game against the Bulls in just 27 minutes. The impressive all-around effort made Monroe the first Celtic center to record a triple-double since Robert Parish did so in March 1987. His efficiency has been stellar all year long in Boston, but his effort on Friday (8-of-10 FG) stood out from the bunch.
“That's what he does. I'm happy for him,” Jaylen Brown said after adding a career-high 32 points himself. “He can really play and he's really going to help us in the playoffs because when he gets it going, there's not a lot of people who can really stop him down there. He's just too big and has too much skill.”
The offense is sure to be an issue for the Celtics when the postseason rolls around with Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving watching from the sidelines. This team is full of capable shooters from the perimeter but no one on the roster excels around the basket quite like Monroe. He is not a traditional fit for Brad Stevens’ system with his lack of perimeter range but his passing and post moves make up for it on nights like Friday.
“I didn’t know it when I got here,” Monroe said of his fit in the offense. “Whenever you get minutes, you play with guys, if you’re trying, you’ll get more comfortable. Especially in this system, the coaching style, the unselfishness of the team, everything works in your favor when everybody’s on the same page. Everybody knows their role, everybody’s unselfish, the ball’s always moving, so you can get a rhythm, you can find your spots early when you play like that.”
The good news for the Celtics and Monroe when you look at the potential first-round matchups for Boston is that they all are matchups where the C’s will be able to get away with having Monroe on the floor. The Heat start Hassan Whiteside. The Bucks play Tyler Zeller and John Henson. The Wizards use Marcin Gortat and Ian Mahinmi. All of those are bigs who can’t shoot from 3-point range, which means Monroe can get away with guarding them. He’s still going to have problems containing guards in the pick-and-roll, but the C’s won’t have to worry about him chasing stretch fives on the perimeter on every possession.
This is critical when you consider the C’s are going to need Monroe’s offense and rebounding to survive all postseason long. Few big men in the NBA can guard him one-on-one in the post and he hits the offensive glass (which produces easy points) just as well as almost anyone in this league, eating up second units with his length. Factor in his passing acumen and you have a guy that can hurt opposing defenses in a number of different ways on any given night.
Greg Monroe finds a cutting Jabari Bird for one of his 10 assists in tonight's @JetBlue Play of the Game! pic.twitter.com/3oCvd6u6BL
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) April 7, 2018