Greg Monroe Rumors

No player’s career better illustrates that sea change than that of Newell’s former pupil Brook Lopez. First at Stanford and then with the Nets in the early 2010s, Lopez starred on the block, deploying an array of soft half hooks and bank shots. For the first eight years of his NBA career, Lopez scored 20 a game while rarely, if ever, attempting a three-pointer. “I absolutely loved posting up,” Lopez says. Then, in the summer before the ’16–17 season, Nets coach Kenny Atkinson told him to start practicing his threes. That season, Lopez launched five threes a game, or two more than Larry Bird did in any year of his career. Lopez adapted and survived, but others struggled. (RIP, Greg Monroe’s NBA career.) The Warriors asked bigs not to post up but to set screens, roll and become pocket passers, preaching, “on time, on target.” Centers who couldn’t shoot became a liability—as did those who couldn’t guard on the perimeter on a switch, leaving them marooned against the likes of Trae Young and Steph Curry, launching 26-footers off the dribble. By 2019, The Ringer declared: “The Post-up Is Deader Than Dead in the NBA.”