A Giant Mystery: The Enigmatic Tale of Thad Monroe
Thad Monroe was, in his short career, one of the most ferocious rebounders in NBA history. He was as forceful and ever present on the court as he was shy and reclusive off it. When he felt it was time to walk away from the game, he did so abruptly with no explanation, leaving millions of dollars in guaranteed money on the table. This was shocking to many but not to the three men you're about to meet. They knew Mr. Monroe before the fame. They knew a man who, in his youth, had already walked away from the type of fortune and prestige that most men can only dream of. What will follow is a brief oral history of the life of Thad Monroe: heir to a fortune, star athlete and finally vanished man, whereabouts unknown.
Chapter 1: Turning to Basketball- The Fickle Finger of Fate
Jonathon"Red"Widely has been an award winning sportswriter since his work was first honored with the Cincinnatti Tribune in 1967. He's worked for dozens of publications across the country since that time and he covered Thad Monroe during his career in the NBA.
jonathon Widely:
"Can a lifetime of fine grooming be undone by one unsightly broken finger? Yes, my friends, if you're Thad Monroe, formerly Thaddeus Monroe, formerly the third such Thaddeus Monroe, formerly a man of such desirable heritage that even intentional self-sabotage would be unlikely to alter his golden arc to wealth and greatness, it can. Basketball, the most urban of games, stole him from life among the noble classes and that single gnarly digit proved the jimmy by which it pried him away.
Born to greatness just four generations removed from one of the titans of U.S. industry, the young Monroe had a blueprint for success already laid out for him: Princeton (Certainly, Princeton. The Monroes had a rich history of attending and patronizing that institution.), law school (although one of his uncles did buck the trend and opt to become a physician), and then life attending to the family businesses of oil, the arts and philanthropy (the order of importance here being somewhat up to the discretion of each Monroe).
It all changed for the teenage Thaddeus around the age of fifteen. He was scheduled to attend a very important formal function of some sort at his prep school, where the drinking of tea was required. Young Thaddeus was nervous about the event, having broken his pinky the day before while wrestling with one of his brothers. Oh, what detestable irony that the extension of said pinky would be required at said event! You see, the 'pinky up' tradition was still in vogue then at some of the more stuffy gathering in New York and Thaddeus, with his now crooked digit, feared he would be unable to perform. He feigned sickness to avoid the event and was so disturbed about having to lie to his parents that he developed a phobia about such events thenceforth. The pressure of having to live up to his family name drove him to a place as far away from that pressure as he could imagine. Feeling like an outsider, he began hanging out with the one African American student at the school and through him discovered the hardwood."
Colston Mcbride is a close friend of the Monroe family who attended college with his father. He has known Thad Monroe since he was a boy.
Colston Mcbride:
"Ok, it was a dinner party, first of all. The family had thrown a large dinner party. At this party was a member of the royal family. A duke, a duchess, neither here nor there, right? Thaddeus had broken both pinkies in some kind of fight and when it came time to drink tea, everyone extended their pinky. It's a Windsor thing, right? Thaddeus wasn't drinking so his father started nudging him, like, you know, go ahead. When he does, the duchess visibly recoils and one of his brothers starts laughing, right? Oh, he was so embarrassed! And afterword he gets yelled at by his father. It was so traumatising for the young man that he swore he was going to reject the whole high society thing and he began playing basketball because, well you know, it's a game mostly played by black people. It's not exactly considered the sport of gentlemen, right? He turned out to be pretty good at it and he never looked back."
Marcus Brooks is a shooting guard for the Toronto Raptors. He played with Thad Monroe during his 6 year tenure with the team.
Marcus Brooks:
"Alright, first off, can we kill the fucking pinky story, please? I can tell you real quick why Thad decided to play basketball. You ready? He's 7 foot 2! He didn't turn to it because of an awkward social experience. When you're that tall, your whole life is an awkward social experience. I have trouble finding clothes and I'm 6'6". Think about him. Everything is different when you're that tall and if you want to fit in, basketball's probably the best place to do it. I read an estimate that there are less than 70 American men between 20 and 40 who are 7 feet tall. Now think about that. There's maybe 12 in the NBA. So for guys around Thad's height, more than one in six are in the NBA. Pretty good odds. My man, does have a busted finger. I got a couple myself. He didn't play basketball because of it. He got it because he was playing basketball."
Chapter 2: Discovering His Game- A Gentleman's fury
Jonathon Widely:
"From the moment he picked up the leather sphere, Thad Monroe was violence personified on the court. Foregoing any pretense of finesse, he was a whirling dervish of limbs and pulsating heart. He gained far more pleasure from thieving away an opponent's rebound or rejecting his attempt on the basket than he did in padding the stat sheet on the offensive end. He was a beast out there and he wanted to be seen as one. With his long unkempt hair, dripping with sweat, he prowled the court on defense like a giant jungle cat and pounded the boards on offense, nothing drawing his attention, from the beginning, but the basest of work, the grunt stuff. Dirty. Grimy. Physical."
Marcus Brooks:
"Thad will be the first to tell you, he was known as a defensive guy mainly because he wasn't that good at offense. That's typical with guys who come late to the game. His high school coach told him that rebounding was all about effort and if he used his size to crash the boards, he could go far. So my man, did. He had a big body and he used it to block shots and work inside. You can't teach size but he also worked his ass off and he made it to the NBA, which is all he really wanted. I will tell ya, he got better and had a pretty good little hook shot by his 3rd year with us. Even then he got most of his points on putbacks."
Colston McBride:
"The way he played was just another extension of that traumatising thing with his father, right? He swore to himself, and just to himself, I don't think he ever told anyone, that he would never be a gentleman like his dad. He was going to be a brute and, man, you could see it out there the way he played."
Chapter 3: College- Go West, Young Man
Marcus Brooks:
"He was all-state in high school and he went to Cali because Berkely's a real good school. They've had some good pros come out of there: Jason Kidd.. KJ, and they recruited him. His first choice would have been Duke but they never contacted him. That's about it. Uh, he also said he liked that it was close enough to the beach that he could drive there, maybe 90 minutes away, something like that."
Colston McBride:
"He could have gone anywhere so it could not be more clear how upset he was with his father than when he decided to travel all the way across the country, I mean as far as he could, to go to college. And on top of that, it was the most liberal college possible. I mean, talk about rejecting your parents. I think it changed him too, living in California. I really think there was no going back, after that, I mean to his old life."
Jonathon Widely:
"Like the prodigal son, he left his home, but away from his inheritance, to escape it. Like the prodigal son he left his home, but not to squander his gifts, no, to multiply them. Like the prodigal son, he left for a distant country of sorts, but to return triumphant, just a year later at the NBA draft in New York City. Poetic? Yes. True? Absolutely. Thad Monroe went as far away as his talents could possibly take him- more than 2500 miles they took him. He worked on his game, he became a man and thus assured another fortune by casting aside the first."
Chapter 4: The NBA and Marriage- A Siren Calls
Colston Mcbride:
"He got picked pretty high in the draft thing and he got a really big contract. It wasn't too long before, forgive the expression, 'the hoochies' started coming around. There was this one tall, shapely young woman who caught this eye and he got smitten with her pretty quick. She was black and, again forgive the expression, kind of 'ghetto' but he just fell for her, right? I can't imagine what his father thought but of course, they weren't exactly on speaking terms by that point. He got married within, like, 2 weeks of meeting her and they were practically glued together from then on."
Jonathon Widely:
"Our hero, like so many heroes, having already achieved his ultimate goal found himself lonely and adrift at sea. He adapted to the grind of the pro game, quite well, a beastly force firmly within his element. However, the off the court attention, far greater, more smothering than what he'd experienced on his quaint liberal campus, proved more of a challenge. He struggled through interviews and shunned the press as much as he was permitted to do so. The scores of young women at each hotel in every single NBA city proved even harder to avoid. He became entranced with one such young lass and married her shortly thereafter in the summer following his rookie year. A happy marriage it seems, one that continues to this day. One that seems to center him.
If Odysseus had only unchained himself from the mast and answered the seductive song... well, that seems a foolhardy way to find happiness but I will attest from being one of those formerly shunned reporters the young Thad seemed more confident, assured and yes, content after he answered the siren's call."
Marcus Brooks:
"His wife's name is Alexis, Alexis Monroe. She happens to be my cousin and if you've heard anything bad about her, I want the names and numbers of, uh.. who done said it. You got me? They met at Berkely. She played on the women's team there. He tried to talk to her back then and she made it clear that she didn't date ballplayers. He met her again at a party at my place.
They had some things in common. She's 6'3. She's beautiful, which doesn't hurt, and, of course, they both went to Cal. They had a good conversation, but again, she don't date ballplayers. He bugged me for weeks to get her number. I asked her. She finally, said yes and they hit it off. He had to court the girl though for months long distance. He was on the road, she still had a year of school left and they talked a lot online. They dated whenever he was in town and I know he never dated anyone else 'cause we were roommates on the road and I watched his ass. He's a standup dude and I wouldn't let no one less date my cousin.
They got married after his first year and it fits, you know. They're both geeky as hell and into psychology but she gives him a hard time because she's got her degree in it and he only has a few credits. I love them both a lot and, uh,... give me just a minute... His family's been great to her. It's just great when everything works out."
Chapter 5: Sudden Retirement- A Giant Walks Away
Jonathon Widely:
"The league's leading rebounder, after six battle scarred seasons in the pivot, having signed a massive guaranteed contract, walked away. He simply walked away. No press conference. No explanation. Just a lonely swinging door. Not since Jim Brown phoned in his retirement from a movie set has a man in his prime so abruptly and callously left the game. Who would do such a thing: walk willingly away from a fortune? Perhaps, the sage in me says: the man who's done it before."
Marcus Brooks:
"Yeah, the retirement surprised people but it was pretty simple. It was his feet. A guy that big with that much weight. All that running on a hard court can really take it out of your feet. Bill Walton, Yao Ming, a lot of big guys have left for the same reason. He decided that he'd made enough money already that he could live anywhere in the world he wanted and he didn't want to just take money from Toronto if he couldn't really contribute. Like I said, he's a real standup guy."
Colston McBride:
"I really think the pressure got to him from leading this double life for so long, you know, the gentleman clashing with the warrior, I also, have it on good authority that there may have been some gambling complications. I have a pretty good source who, well, let's just say he may have been involved with the wrong people. You don't just walk away from that kind of money for no reason, right? I mean, would you?"
Chapter 6: The Vanishing- Where is Thad Monroe
Jonathon Widely:
"I last spoke to Thad Monroe, two years ago, postgame, about a month before his retirement announcement, when he was playing in Boston. It was about a month before he disappeared. He seemed happy. He seemed well. I don't know where a man like that goes to find seclusion. A man of his size, with such a recognizable face. I can only hope he found his island, literal or just figurative. It seems he's been running his whole life and I like to think of him now, finally, at rest, now, finally, home."
Colston McBride:
"The last time I actually talked to him, was, I think he was in 7th grade. It was at his school. It was sometime before he began his athletic career and he was at the time the spitting image of his father, although already, I believe he was taller. As for where he is, I hate to say this, but I think he may... no longer be with us. I have a source who suggests that the gambling, um, the people he got tangled up with, well, it may have been quite serious. I pray that's not the case. I really do. I just don't know how else to explain it. It's so odd, right? I hope I'm wrong. I really do. And if I am, maybe one day, we'll see him again."
Marcus Brooks:
"He texted me yesterday but I haven't caught him on the phone since last week. Him and Alexis are in Turkey. I mean, I'm not gonna give you his address or anything but you can read about the charity work he's doing. He's pretty famous over there. He chose Turkey because he went and played there for a little while during the last lockout. They have a great pro league and when he came back, he always talked about how nice it was. I went to visit them a few months ago. Of course, my man lives on the beach and, I gotta say, it's beautiful. As for vanishing, that's the first I've heard of that. I mean, he didn't hold a press conference or announce it on Twitter. He just moved. He says he could see himself moving back stateside, maybe in a couple of years. But right now, they're good and as long as they're good I couldn't be happier for them."
Epilogue
I wrote this piece because of two nagging questions: who is Thad Monroe really? and why did he disappear? I must confess after conducting these interviews and much exhaustive research, I'm not much closer to my long sought answers. Perhaps he was a man of privilege seduced by a brutish game. Perhaps he was driven to it by some karmic accident. Did he travel across the country to try and escape his roots or simply to try and find himself? The answer remains debatable. Did he marry a common woman to spite his parents or because only within her world could he truly find himself? Only Thad Monroe knows. As for his whereabouts now, I can only hope along with the great Jonathon Widely that he has somehow found his island. Could it be Turkey? As good a guess as any, I imagine. It is a much more pleasant hypothetical than the grim existence that some of us fear, which is that he's lost to us, no longer existing at all. If there is a final chapter for Thad Monroe, I hope to write it. For now, he will remain a mystery, a tale without an ending. But I think you'll agree, a remarkable one all the same.