Greg Monroe said it wouldn’t necessarily have taken max money to convince him to sign long-term rather than take the one-year qualifying offer from the Pistons, as Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News observes. The 24-year-old added that he doesn’t feel a need to cash in whenever and wherever possible and expressed that he was apprehensive about doing so with Detroit before he and new coach/executive Stan Van Gundy become more comfortable with each other.
“It’s no disrespect to the people working here but it was just tough for me to agree to another four years with new people,” Monroe said. “Honestly, if you were to ask the average person would they do that in the arena they’re in, they’d say no.”
Monroe hopes Van Gundy won’t decide to start Andre Drummond and Josh Smith over him purely based on their respective contracts, as Goodwill also details. Monroe’s impending unrestricted free agency will be a storyline we’ll follow all season, but for now, here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- Rajon Rondo and the Celtics still have to convince each other that a long-term future together is the right course of action, president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said today, tweets Ben Rohrbach of WEEI.com. Still, Ainge also said that he and Rondo have spoken about roster moves they’d like to make, Rohrbach adds in a separate tweet.
- Shannon Brown doesn’t have a guarantee on his contract with the Heat, but he’s emerged as the favorite to serve as the primary backup for Dwyane Wade at shooting guard, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald notes.
- The deal that Ronald Roberts Jr. broke off with France’s Chalon-Sur-Saone to sign with the Sixers instead was guaranteed for more money than the $35K partial guarantee that Philadelphia gave him, writes Tom Moore of Calkins Media. “My mindset was if I have an NBA team knocking on my door, I’ve got to take it,” Roberts said.