Nobody Puts Danny Green in the Corner
Danny Green has been backed into a corner. He’s probably fine with that.
With the San Antonio Spurs failing to take advantage of a pivotal Game 4 in their series against the Los Angeles Clippers, attention has turned to the disappearance of Danny Green’s jumper. And as Tony Parker and Tiago Splitter continue to fight through injury, Green seems to be the only starter left without a clear reason for struggling.
In the Spurs’ two wins this series, Danny Green has shot 50 percent from the field. In their two losses he went 2-of-17, an astonishing drop. The slump comes at a bad time for a team fighting to win a series without home-court advantage against one of the league’s best teams, but it comes at an even worse time for a player about to enter the quagmire of free agency. Green’s performance in Game 4 might have been his worst in a Spurs jersey, a mess of bad decisions and poor shooting that made it difficult to justify keeping him on the court. There’s no question that Danny Green plays an important role on this roster, but it’s worth revisiting just what he means to the team in light of his recent struggles.
For most people, Green’s coming-out party was the first five games of the 2013 NBA Finals. In that stretch, he was arguably San Antonio’s most important player. Green’s accuracy from behind the 3-point line was record-breaking, reaching a level of deadliness that threatened to rend time and space apart. (Seriously. Look at this. His performance over that stretch was literally one in a million.) For a player who spent years in the NBA clawing for a spot at the end of any team’s bench, this was more than a coming-out party. Green famously called Gregg Popovich after being cut, begging for a spot back and a chance to prove himself. His success on the league’s biggest stage – and his great work there again a year later – was a testament to Green’s years of hard work and a determination to improve his game.
Nothing in Green’s tenure with the Spurs suggests that this three-game span in 2015 is anything other than an unfortunate outlier. Since his 2011-12 breakout season with the Spurs, his field-goal percentage for each season has hovered around 44 percent. His 3-point percentage, representing the bulk of his shot attempts, has never dipped below 41 percent for a season. It’s easy to miss this: Watching him miss so many wide open three-point attempts is only baffling because he’s been so consistent.
The reality is shooting slumps happen, and predicting when they might occur and how long they might last is a fool’s game. But in Green’s case, the reason might simply be fatigue. During the regular season, no other Spur played more than Green’s 2,312 minutes, the most of any season in his career. After all the drama of the team’s late season push for a higher seed, it’s easy to forget that Green’s offense in the first half of the season was one of the few things that helped keep the team afloat with Parker, Splitter, Kawhi Leonard, and Patty Mills missing long stretches with a variety of injuries. When the Spurs’ outlook was darkest in the dredges of a hilariously unlucky December, Green averaged the most minutes of any month during his tenure with the Spurs.
The murmurs about Green’s recent play and subsequent discussion of how he fits in the Spurs’ offseason plans reveal how misunderstood his importance to the team is, particularly on the defensive end. Even as his stroke has abandoned him, his value on the roster has not. Consider this: Of all the players on the roster to average at least 10 minutes per game this series — admittedly a very small sample size — Danny Green’s 16.3 net rating leads the team (tied with Patty Mills). Were it not for his defense on Chris Paul, which has been mostly stellar, the Spurs could be facing the end of their season on Tuesday night. This should not be surprising.
Green’s Defensive Real Plus-Minus was sixth among guards during the regular season. And even with his shooting missing in action this series, his 113.4 offensive rating leads the team. Green’s presence in the starting lineup, one of the league’s best five-man units, is not simply a luxury. His ability to provide solid defense and present the only real threat from distance in that group makes him an absolute necessity. He boasted the fourth-highest Real Plus-Minus among all guards last season. He’s become the unsung cog in San Antonio’s technicolor death machine, and with an offseason of uncertainty ahead of him, any contract negotiation will likely start there. As Green goes, so have the defending champs.
The saying goes you’re only as good as your next shot. Green has spent his whole career fighting to get open, cut from a bottom-dwelling Eastern Conference dog to carving a vital role on a title-winning team, setting franchise and league records along the way. Present circumstances have backed him into a corner, but after all we’ve seen from Green, shouldn’t we know by now not to bet against him?
** Stats pulled from NBA.com/stats and ESPN.com
