BURNABY, B.C. — Veterans win in the NBA is a truism that is actually true. Why is another matter.
Are older players just better? Or do better players stick around long enough to get old?
It could just be that with the restrictions the salary cap puts on team building, it takes a long time to assemble rosters with enough good players to win and win big. It could also be that once winning teams are built there are enough advantages in the collective bargaining agreement to preserve the status that teams can age together successfully.
Whatever. It feels like a safe blanket statement to say very few teams led by players on entry-level deals win rings or even make it to the conference finals.
This bodes well for the Toronto Raptors. All they did in the off-season was get older. They have a roster devoid of rookies (as they traded their 2018 draft picks) and in Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and Greg Monroe, they added a collective 24 years of NBA experience.
But some experience is more valuable than others. Leonard is simply a flat-out stud, in the midst of his prime. Those guys always help.
In Green – the somewhat overlooked second piece the Raptors got in the Leonard deal – Toronto picked up some experience that really matters. He’s a 30-year-old former all-NBA defender who has played in 100 playoff games and shot 41 per cent from deep in the post-season. He won a championship in 2014, went to the Finals in 2013 and was in the Western Conference Finals in 2017.
While some NBA players spend their careers hoping to find a winning situation and many never do, Green’s entire career has been spent with a white coat on in a basketball laboratory that has turned winning into a seeming science as he’s been able to absorb lessons from the likes of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker – all Hall of Fame-bound and Spurs royalty. Not to mention he was playing for Gregg Popovich, who has led the Spurs to five titles and 21 consecutive playoff appearances and counting, the longest active playoff streak in professional sports.
It seems reasonable to presume Green has some knowledge to share with a Raptors organization that has been past the second round of the playoffs once since the franchise was founded. Fortunately Green was a good student and he’s more than willing to share his notes.
“I’m very lucky with my career,” he said after the Raptors’ second day of training camp in Burnaby, B.C. “I’ve been on winning teams most of my career and played with some great guys and for some great coaches. I learned a lot. I was a sponge my rookie year [in Cleveland] with LeBron and Shaq and from there on [in San Antonio with] Timmy, Tony, Manu and coach Pop and all the guys who have come through … I learned from everybody, the good and the bad in all organizations so I’ve been very blessed to be able to be a part of those situations.”
Such as?
“The biggest thing is just not getting too high, not getting too low, grinding it out, it’s a long season, it’s a long game. Not every game is gonna go great,” said Green. “Just staying really locked in and being disciplined, being professional. Fighting out certain game situations and sticking together — not complaining to referees, not criticizing each other. Positive criticism, constructive criticism is okay, but we’re fighting these battles together and not to worry about other things we can’t control.”
Since the Spurs were so veteran-laden, Green finds himself in a unique position for a player heading into his 10th NBA season – for the first time in his career he’s being looked upon to be part of a team’s leadership group.
“It’s different. It takes some adjusting to,” he said. “Coaches are asking me for different thoughts and theories. Players are looking up to me to see how I’m carrying myself, how I’m doing things, asking me for advice. But it’s one I am OK with and hopefully we can all learn from each other, adjust accordingly and have a good thing going.”
Green’s on-court attributes are obvious. The Spurs were at the forefront of implementing ‘3-and-D’ wings as key role players — think Bruce Bowen – to complement ball-dominant attackers and in Green they groomed one of the best. After becoming a full-time starter in 2012-13, Green averaged 14 points, five rebounds, 1.5 steals and 1.2 blocks per 36 minutes for the next three years while shooting 42 per cent form the three-point line – a level of both ends production and efficiency virtually unmatched over that period. Green’s play fell off somewhat last season, which he and the Raptors are hoping was attributable to a nagging groin injury that eventually required surgery.
Presuming his good health, Toronto instantly become a better defending and better shooting team with Green on the floor.
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But it might be his less measurable qualities that could have just as much impact as the Raptors gear up for a run at the Finals. The Duncan-era Spurs are so iconic for their consistency and excellence that having someone on your team who can pull back the veil a little bit is like having a conduit directly to a Hall-of-Fame mind.
“We’ve been talking to Danny since mid-July when we were doing the L.A. trip … he was around a lot of time, so as a fan of the game you just want to learn what those years were like, what those Finals were like, what’s the time like, what is San Antonio like?” said Raptors third-year point guard Fred VanVleet.
“That’s one of the top organizations in the league in terms of championships and so you want to learn that, you want to study that. You want to study history, and see where you can take little things that they did and see where they went wrong, and it’s a lot of what we talk about was the times they didn’t win. We want to take as much knowledge those guys have and add it to what we have, and it could be a special year for us.”
It helps that Green is such an approachable, upbeat presence; another element that matters in a long NBA season.
“He’s like the ultimate teammate, right?” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “He does everything with a little bit of positivity and a little bit of a smile on his face [a] ‘come-on-let’s-go type of attitude.’ Those guys go a long way. They’re fun to be around. He’s great to be around, man.”
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But the Raptors represent an opportunity for Green too, and not simply as a vessel for his Duncan stories. With the Spurs he played a role and played it well, but the pecking order was well-established.
Like any NBA player he believes he’s got more in his toolbox than he’s had the opportunity to use and jumping into the kind of equal-opportunity, free-flowing offence like Nurse favours should give him a chance to show some different elements in his game.
“It’s a lot easier playing and flowing and a lot more freedom,” he said. “We are looking more for the perimeter shot. [The Spurs] played at a little slower pace the last couple of years and we looked inside first and then out. Now it’s more push the pace, get up and down and get more looks from the perimeter. You don’t have to hold back as much if you’re me; second guessing which shots I should or shouldn’t take.”
As a veteran being relied upon to contribute to winning in all kinds of ways, the Raptors don’t want Green to hold back at all, on or off the floor.
