NBA Players Barely Hanging onto Their Careers
LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry are collectively pushing the boundaries of NBA career length. While those three are notable for sustaining superstar levels of production deep into their 30s, several others deserve credit for sticking around long after their games diminished at normal rates.
In some ways, the group of players still clinging to roster spots while performing well below their peak levels is more impressive.
They've had to tune out their egos, adjust to new roles and find ways to drive winning that may not have anything to do with putting the ball in the basket. That's a tall order—one many don't handle gracefully.
Here, we'll give nods to players like Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green and others who are still bringing it on the floor and/or as locker room leaders. They may not be what they once were, but these guys have outlasted nearly all of their peers by playing the long (career) game.
Jeff Green, Houston Rockets
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The Houston Rockets picked up Jeff Green's $8 million team option for 2024-25, a large figure for a player who's become more of an adult-in-the-room chaperone than an on-court contributor over the last several years. His continued presence on the Rockets roster has everything to do with that $8 million's potential to be matching salary in a trade.
Green, 38, was once a reliable double-digit scorer who could threaten defenses from all three levels and guard multiple positions. Never a star, Green still started 657 of the 1,185 contests he'd played prior to this season and totes a career stat line of 12.0 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.6 blocks and 0.5 steals in 27.7 minutes per game.
"Uncle Jeff's" ability to surprise opponents with driving, one-handed dunks continued late into a career that has spanned 11 teams, including the Seattle SuperSonics.
He and Kevin Durant are the last active players to have suited up for that franchise before it moved to Oklahoma City. If he can somehow hang on another few years, he might even last long enough to see Seattle return as an NBA city.
Green has only seen action in three games this season, totaling 12 minutes for a stacked Rockets team that needs to divvy up its playing time among several players who weren't even in preschool when Green's career began in 2007.
It's possible he catches on with another team after his current contract expires in June, as there's always a need for sage vets in locker rooms. A scoring average that has declined for five straight years suggests, however, Green's days as an actual rotation fixture are over.
Taj Gibson, Charlotte Hornets
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With injuries to centers Mark Williams and Nick Richards, the Charlotte Hornets have recently turned to 39-year-old veteran Taj Gibson.
Somewhere, Tom Thibodeau is smiling.
Gibson, a gritty, defensive-minded power forward who has sopped up minutes as an undersized center plenty of times over his 16-year career, has been a favorite of Thibs since the early 2010s with the Chicago Bulls. It's possible Thibodeau likes a few others as much as Gibson, but we haven't heard many stories of him calling any other free agents in the dead of night to see if they can play the next day.
The early career version of Gibson that so endeared him to Thibs finished fifth in Rookie of the Year and regularly contended for Sixth Man of the Year through his 20s, peaking with a second-place finish for the 2013-14 Bulls.
Thibodeau never forgot his guy, calling upon Gibson during stops with the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks (two separate stints). Charlotte, Gibson's seventh team, could be his last. Though a rough spate of injuries among Hornets big men has him back in a rotation for now, Gibson is on a minimum deal that expires this summer and logged just 20 games a year ago between the Knicks and Detroit Pistons.
A terrific defender who tended to show up on winning teams more often than not, Gibson sits at 970 career games with averages of 8.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.0 block with a 51.7 field-goal percentage.
Tough, widely respected and a favorite of one of the most demanding coaches in modern NBA history, Gibson has had a distinguished career. Whenever he officially concludes his run in the league, Gibson will be in line for no shortage of adulation from the fans of the seven teams for which he's played.
Russell Westbrook, Denver Nuggets
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It's one thing for a solid starter or journeyman vet to ease into his twilight years, but it's quite another for a former superstar. In that sense, Russell Westbrook is having a very different experience than Green or Gibson, whose adjustments to diminished roles have probably been much easier to handle.
Westbrook, a player defined by extreme aggression and unshakeable self-belief, has struggled to adjust to his new reality. The days of averaging triple-doubles and winning MVPs are long gone, but occasional "vintage Russ" outbursts remind everyone of the consistently dominant form he used to show. A couple of recent examples came at a critical time for the injury-hit Denver Nuggets.
On Nov. 4, Westbrook piled up 21 points, six rebounds and six assists in a two-point win over the Toronto Raptors. Two nights later, he went for 29, six and six on 10-of-15 shooting in Denver's best win of the year, a two-point home victory over the previously unbeaten Oklahoma City Thunder.
Playing for his sixth team in seven years and no longer a regular starter (unless forced into the job by injuries), Westbrook's career wind-down has more to do with how difficult it is to feature him in a key role than declining production. Though he's still a double-digit scorer who can change games with his competitive intensity, Russ lacks the skills—off-ball shooting, consistent defense, ball security—most teams need from their role players.
Odds are, Westbrook can keep signing minimum deals until his athleticism slips another notch and he can no longer impact games through sheer force of will. For now, Westbrook can still eat up minutes off the bench. It's just hard to be sure how much longer that'll be the case.
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Garrett Temple, Toronto Raptors
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Universally praised for his locker-room leadership and steady demeanor, Garrett Temple is still hanging around the league at age 38. That's an impressive feat for a player whose scoring average hasn't topped 4.0 points per game in any of the last three seasons.
Temple's best year was probably 2016-17 with the Sacramento Kings when he posted a modest 11.2 Player Efficiency Rating (league average is 15.0) and a 54.5 true shooting percentage, his best figure in any season in which he played at least 1,000 minutes.
That Temple has stuck around, bouncing between a dozen teams and never lasting anywhere for more than four seasons, speaks to his intangible contributions. He's basically the guy teams seek out when they need a culture-setter, and quotes like the one current Raptors teammate Kelly Olynyk offered could have come from any of Temple's previous stops.
"Sometimes you have people who have been through a lot of experience and have a lot of knowledge, but they are not great teachers," Olynyk told Lindsay Dunn of CityNews. "Garrett is one of those guys who is able to have knowledge and be able to pass it on to the younger guys."
Temple will be a free agent after his one-year, $3.3 million minimum salary comes off the books this summer. Though his production has all but disappeared, there's a good chance the 15-year veteran will land with another young team in need of some locker-room wisdom.
Patty Mills, Utah Jazz
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Another late-30s hanger-on in the mold of Temple, Green and Gibson, Patty Mills also comes with the added bonus of championship experience and a thorough steeping in the San Antonio Spurs' high-functioning culture.
When former Spurs assistant and current Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy spoke on the rationale for bringing Mills aboard this season, he notably didn't talk much about what the 36-year-old Aussie would contribute on the floor.
"Our team needs some veteran leadership," Hardy told KSL Sports. "We need some people to model behavior for the young players. We also need people that are going to fully give themselves to the group. Also, Patty's an extrovert and we have a team that has a lot of introverts."
Mills is a career 38.5 percent shooter from deep who can still draw defensive attention when running around screens off the ball, but he hasn't averaged more than 7.0 points per game since 2021-22 and hasn't made more than 45.0 percent of his field goals in over a decade.
The Jazz are Mills' fourth team in the last three years, and they may be his last. Unless Hardy or another head coach in search of an exemplary professional decides Mills' off-court contributions are worth the roster spot.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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