Danny Green Retires After 15 NBA Seasons; Won Titles with Lakers, Spurs, Raptors

Danny Green is hanging up his sneakers after 15 NBA seasons and three championships.

He announced he is retiring from the NBA on Thursday and called it "one helluva journey that I'm immensely proud of":

The swingman played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Lakers, Philadelphia 76ers and Memphis Grizzlies during a career that started in 2009.

Green entered the league as a second-round pick in the 2009 NBA draft and played his rookie season on the Cavaliers.

Yet he remained with Cleveland for just one season and didn't establish himself as an impact player until his third year in the league with the Spurs. He played in San Antonio for eight seasons, which was his longest stretch with any one franchise during his career.

While with the Spurs, he won his first ring in 2014 and became a key secondary playmaker who could take advantage of the spacing that came with playing alongside players such as Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and Manu Ginóbili.

Green connected on 39.6 percent of his three-pointers during his time with the Spurs and hit 45 percent of his triples during the 2014 NBA Finals win over LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

He wasn't done winning championships, as he teamed up with Leonard again and won a ring during his one season with the Raptors in 2018-19 and then reached the sport's mountaintop alongside James on the Lakers in 2019-20. He famously hit six three-pointers in Toronto's Game 3 win over the Golden State Warriors during the 2019 NBA Finals.

From there, Green bounced around to the 76ers, Cavaliers again and Grizzlies. He played just 11 games in 2022-23 and two games in 2023-24 as he struggled to fully bounce back from the torn ACL and LCL he suffered during the 2022 playoffs.

It might not have been the ending he envisioned, but Green had an impressive career and averaged 8.7 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game while shooting 40.0 percent from three-point range across his 15 seasons.

As ESPN's Shams Charania noted, he is also just one of four players in league history to win championships with three different franchises. It is that postseason success he will likely be best remembered for, as he found a way to maximize his talents as an important role player on a number of talented teams.