Milwaukee Bucks: Examining Greg Monroe’s Long-Term Fit
As we near the end of the season for the Milwaukee Bucks, questions still revolve around big man Greg Monroe‘s fit within the team.
It’s been far from a positive year for Greg Monroe.
After his signing with the Bucks sent shock waves through the league last summer, Monroe’s first season in Milwaukee hasn’t lived up to the expectations that many, if not all, Bucks fans and followers of the NBA were expecting at the beginning of the year.
Obviously some of that has been through no fault of Monroe’s, and to his credit, Monroe has largely been the player that the team was expecting he’d be when he signed with the Bucks last offseason.
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But the growing concern regarding Monroe’s fit and impact within the team has never been more illuminated than it has since the Bucks returned from the All-Star break over a month ago.
His stretch of coming off the bench for the team didn’t help alleviate those concerns, but Monroe’s output and impact certainly has waned over the last few weeks.
While his shooting efficiency has been solid (Monroe’s shooting 52 percent from the field), Monroe’s only averaging 12.6 points per game and 7.8 rebounds per game since the All-Star break.
Furthermore, Monroe’s offensive role has significantly declined since the break as his usage rate is hovering at 20.7 percent (per NBA.com/stats) in just 27.8 minutes per game.
That’s not particularly surprising since both the ongoing “Point Giannis” experiment as well as a much more involved and improving Jabari Parker have really been the story for the Bucks in the last few weeks.
However, it speaks volumes that Monroe has taken a backseat as we’re starting to see how bright the future is for the Bucks based on the play from the team’s two young and promising stars, along with the ever expanding Khris Middleton.
That’s where the problem lies with Monroe and his fit within this young Bucks squad.
Even on his worst night, Monroe’s still a highly productive player and as the big man position is fading or rapidly changing based on your perspective, the low post presence that Monroe provides can still work and deliver positive results for the right team.
Yet it’s become increasingly clear that the Bucks are not the right team for Monroe.
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It’s a conclusion that has been hard to swallow as the addition of Monroe showed that even a small market team and an afterthought of a free agent destination like Milwaukee was notoriously known to be, could fight off the big market teams to get a player of Monroe’s caliber after delivering a season’s worth of success.
However, the team that Monroe was expecting to reach the postseason with since he was “starving for the playoffs” as he put it in his introductory press conference last July is hardly the same team that made it to the playoffs just a year ago.
Of course, there have been things that have been out of Monroe’s control that have contributed to the disappointing season that the Bucks are trying to close the book on, but there are some intangibles that are hard to overcome with Monroe’s presence on both ends of the floor.
With that said, it looks to be quite an interesting summer for the Bucks as trade rumors revolving around Monroe will ultimately stoke back up again as they did before this season’s trade deadline.
Next: Milwaukee Bucks Player of the Week (Mar. 20th – Mar. 26th)
Despite the letdown of the season that all Bucks fans will quickly try to forget once it’s done, the future of the team still looks incredibly brighter that it has been in quite a long time. The question of whether the biggest free agent signing in the team’s history has place as a part of the future still remains unanswered.