Greg Monroe does this every time he plays the Pistons. Trying to prove that he’s better than Andre Drummond? That the Pistons made a huge mistake when they chose Andre over him? He even dunked it off an alley-oop in this game. If that wasn’t him trying to make a point to the Pistons’ FO, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.
One of the most common things to say about Monroe early in his career is how he was drafted after Ekpe Udoh. Remember, Udoh really sucked. The Warriors drafted him thinking he would be good and he wasn’t. How different the NBA landscape would be if they had drafted Monroe instead! I don’t even want to think about how different; once you get a few years back, even the most inconsequential trade of end-of-bunch scrubs for wildly protected second-round picks starts having major consequences. That’s just a rabbit hole I’m not willing to go down.