Why I don't want Monroe..Grantland piece from 2013..
Monroe is a very good offensive player, but he’s a glaring liability on defense in a league getting smaller and quicker. He’s a turnstile trying to contain the pick-and-roll out on the floor — a mess of bad footwork, poor timing, lazy reaches, and bad choices. When Detroit has him hang back at the foul line, ball handlers can zip around him with an easy crossover or launch wide-open jumpers as Monroe, petrified at giving up a rim run, retreats a step farther than most bigs would dare — often with his arms down. Pistons fans complained, with some justification, about Lawrence Frank’s reluctance to play Monroe and Drummond together for much of last season, but Monroe’s total inability to guard stretchier power forwards factored into that choice — just as it should factor into Detroit’s evaluation of things now.
When the Pistons asked Monroe to attack the ball higher on the floor, the mess was almost worse. Point guards can juke Monroe with laughable ease by faking toward a screener, watching Monroe lurch in that direction, and then crossing over the other way and into an unpatrolled lane. Monroe is often late in jumping out above a screen, meaning his momentum is going too hard the wrong way (toward half court) as the opposing point guard revs up to turn the corner. And when Detroit has asked him to hedge sideways, as in the still below, Monroe often arrives too late to cut off the ball handler:
Hedge
His off-ball defense is similarly unintuitive. Monroe wants to help and has a rudimentary sense of where he should be as the chess pieces move around the floor, but he’s unsure of himself and prone to fatal hesitations and bouts of confusion. He has struggled to develop any chemistry with his big-man partners, so that a lot of Detroit possessions end with late help rotations or both bigs chasing one opposing big man — each under the impression the other would be elsewhere on the floor. Watching film of Detroit’s defense basically amounts to sitting through an hours-long reel of dunks, shrugged shoulders, and inattentive help; only eight teams allowed more shots at the rim last season, and only three allowed opponents to shoot a higher percentage than the ghastly 61.1 percent Detroit allowed.
To use one example of a simple play with which Detroit and Monroe had depressingly chronic issues: Monroe in the below photo (standing at the right edge of the paint) is only just realizing Nicolas Batum, having caught the ball after flying around a Joel Freeland screen and drawing Freeland’s man onto him, is about to hit Freeland for an easy dunk.
Detroit Pistons
Most of Monroe’s issues are common among young big men. Drummond shares some of the same poor habits. But Monroe has three years under his belt, he’s up for a big-money extension, he’s shown very little (if any) improvement as a defender in the NBA, and he lacks Drummond’s motor or athleticism.
Also, he also never shoots outside the paint..You can't have a PF in today's game that can't stretch the offense to create space...He has never attempted a 3 pointer in the NBA..Monroe has made 385 shots inside the paint and 35 shots outside the paint all season..
