Thanks to the heroic efforts of two Celtics scrubs, Jabari Bird and Jonathan Gibson (basketball-reference, as of this writing, calls him “John Gibson”, but I’m pretty sure this is the same guy who played for the Mavs last season), Greg Monroe was able to secure the second triple-double of his career. Without Bird’s five makes or Gibson’s three off Monroe passes, Monroe would still have had a robust double-double, but his game wouldn’t have been notable at all.
Monroe’s other trippy-dubby was way back in 2012, when he dropped 21/12/11 on the Kings. Andre Drummond, in only his fifth NBA game, for some reason only got five minutes. Jason Maxiell and Kim English got more minutes than him. And, you know, Monroe made Cousins into his bitch, unless he was playing power forward, in which case he made Jason Thompson into his bitch. I love looking at old-but-not-THAT-old box-scores.
Back to the present. With Monroe’s re-emergence as a passing threat, the Celtics can reasonably expect to have a passing bigman on the floor for nearly all 48 minutes. Few teams have that luxury (the Nuggets, with Jokic and Plumlee, come to mind), and it comes just at the right time as their traditional ball-handlers are spread out in various hospital beds around the country. Now if Monroe would just stop missing all those point-blank layups.