Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press:
"Detroit Pistons extended a $5.5 million qualifying offer to big man Greg Monroe over the weekend"
This was merely a formality. Monroe has a one-year, $5,479,934 offer on the table he certainly won’t take – he’s shooting for a much more lucrative contract – but the offer makes him a restricted free agent, so the Pistons had to extend it.
Now, they have the right to match any offer he receives, and I believe they’ll do that all the way up to the maximum another team can offer (projected to be $63,011,880 over four years). That might be slightly overpaying Monroe, but it’s better than losing him for nothing.