Gerald Green: A 22-year Old Former Dunk Champ Seeks Work

Right now, Shavlik Randolph is employed by a team in the NBA.

Gerald Green is not.

Something has to be wrong with this picture.

This past off-season, Green was one of the many players the Celtics sent to Minnesota as part of the Kevin Garnett trade.  He did not spend long in Minnesota, traded to Houston on Feb. 21 for Kirk Snyder and a 2010 second round pick.  His stay in Houston lasted all of six games, with Green playing a grand total of 3:34. 

Then, as The Boston Globe’s Peter May wrote about in his basketball notes column this past Sunday, the Rockets released Green back on March 8.  No team has made an offer to the 2007 Slam Dunk Champ.

I find this almost beyond belief.

The 18th pick in the 2005 NBA draft straight from high school, the 22-year old Green possesses athletic skills like almost no player I have ever watched.  That, combined with his age, would make you believe he is worth signing for some team out of the playoff race. 

The Timberwolves did not take long to conclude that Green was not in their long-term plans, refusing to extend his contract about one month into the season.  This makes Green an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season.

At the time of the trade, however, I never thought Green was a good fit for Minnesota, as they already had Marco Jaric and Rashad McCants, and had recently drafted Corey Brewer. Thus I was not particularly surprised Minnesota did not pick up Green’s option. 

If one reads May’s notebook, there is a lot made of the fact that Green is an amazing dunker, but then both the writer and his former coach Doc Rivers seem to say he isn’t much more. 

This is what I really don’t understand.  He is far from a complete basketball player, and may struggle on defense, but he is much more than a guy who can just dunk.

Green has a very pretty, albeit inconsistent, jump shot.  Looking at his stats from 2007 for the Celtics, Green played in 81 games, averaging 10.4 points per game.  This was at the age of 21, in only his second year in the league.  For comparison, Tracy McGrady, who also went directly to the NBA from high school, averaged 9.3 points in his second year in the league.

A closer look at Green’s 2007 stats reveals that when Doc Rivers let him play, Green produced.  In the 42 games where Green played more than 20 minutes last season, he averaged 15.0 points, scoring 20 or more 14 times.   He scored a career-high 33 in a game versus the Hawks.

There was also the game against Cleveland, a 107-104 loss, where Green scored 21 points in only 19 minutes, including 14 in the second quarter helping Boston to a 54-49 half-time lead. 

His points were not all dunks.  Green shot 36.8% from three, and is a 36.6% career shooter from beyond the arc.  Paul Pierce, granted with a much larger sample size, is a 36.2 career shooter from three. 

In twelve different games in 2006-07, Green hit at least three 3-pointers—with shooting performances such as 4-4 from three at Atlanta April 10, 4-6 in a win over the Knicks Feb. 28, and 5-5 in another win over Milwaukee Feb. 14.

I know points are not everything, and on a bad team, scoring totals can be very misleading.  But I don’t care if Green took a seat on the baseline instead of playing defense, there is no reason why a 22-year old who can score like he can, should ever not have a job in the league.

May, who appears to be taking some sort of joy from Green being released by the Rockets, along with Rivers’ comments, indicate that it is Green’s problems on defense and a general lack of maturity and understanding of the game that led to his current predicament. 

I never confused Green with Scottie Pippen on the defensive side of the court, and for his height and jumping ability, I always wished he gave more attention to rebounding.  But in all the time I watched Green play for the Celtics, I never saw any mistake he made that could be attributed to not caring. 

Granted it could have been a lack of effort in practice and other situations where I obviously do not have access to, that led to mistakes Green made on the court.  But from everything I saw from Green, he appeared to be a good kid.  Regardless of playing time, he always looked invested in the game, paying attention, on his feet from the bench.  He does not appear to be an arrogant, selfish ballplayer.

Maybe I am missing something.  That he has gone through three teams in less than a year, probably should tell me something.

Green was one of many who made the jump straight to the NBA prior to the league instituting the rule requiring players to attend college for one year (count me as a supporter for the league’s effort to increase the requirement to two years, for the benefit of the league, most of the players, and also college basketball). 

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to go straight to the NBA, no matter who the player is.  But for the player who struggles at first, the player not only has to continually work hard to improve, but also deal with not being "the man" for probably the first time.  Many probably never had a setback on the basketball court, and were never anything but the best (or among the best) players on the court at any time prior to getting to the NBA.

For someone like Gerald Green, and others who don’t explode on the scene, to go from being the star to riding the bench, cannot be easy.

It is an adjustment, and the player has to not get frustrated and continue to work on his game.  The problem being, the NBA isn’t really here to teach and develop. Sure there is some time for that during the season, but the focus during the season is the next game. 

There are parts to Green’s game that need work, and the NBA, even under the best coach, is not the ideal place to learn.  Bad teams still want to win, coaches know their job depends on the outcome of these games, and can’t afford to let a player develop on the court at the expense of winning. 

The place to develop the skills to round out one's game is in college.  I firmly believe that had Green gone to college for even one season (he had planned on going to Oklahoma State), he would have been a lottery pick in 2006. 

The areas of his game that are now being criticized he likely never had to use once his entire life growing up due to his other abilities.  In college is where he would have improved on what he already had, as well as developed the other parts of his game.  Since he cannot go back to college to improve, it is on Green himself to spend the off-season doing everything he can to show that teams that gave up on him made a mistake. 

The short time I have been able to watch Gerald Green as a professional athlete, I have enjoyed watching him.  With the right attitude, perspective, and work ethic, this may wind up being a minor set back in Green’s career.  There is no question in my mind that Green has the skills to have a long career in the NBA.

In 2001, the Celtics under Rick Pitino, drafted another super-athletic, yet raw, player in Kedrick Brown. Brown never developed his basketball skills beyond his ability for the athletic play.  He played only four years in the NBA, for the Celtics, Cavaliers and 76ers, averaging 3.6 points.  He now plays in the D-League.

Some Celtics fans have compared Green to Brown—I didn’t see it then, and don’t now.  Even with any deficiency Green’s game might have, he has always been far more advanced than Brown ever was.  I just hope I do not get proven wrong, and that Green returns to the league soon, and reaches his full potential.