Jeff Green only spent one season with the Cleveland Cavaliers but played an essential role on a team that went to the NBA Finals.
Now Jeff Green, who played with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017-18, is looking to play a vital role for another championship contender, the Houston Rockets. Green’s start to the 2019-20 season began in Utah, but he only played 30 games for the Jazz before being waived in late December.
Nearly two months later, Green wound up in Houston on a ten-day contract but impressed Rockets general manager Daryl Morey enough to get a deal for the remainder of the season.
In the ten games Green played before the NBA’s novel coronavirus-induced shutdown in March, he averaged 10.4 points and 3.2 rebounds while shooting 62.1 percent from the floor. Green flashed his potential with the Rockets in his first game, scoring 17 points on six-of-seven shooting (including four-of-five from beyond the three-point line) against the Golden State Warriors.
Fast forward to the NBA restart, and Green has seen constistent minutes for the Rockets in the bubble. In their eight seeding/rest of regular season games, Green averaged 25.7 minutes and scored double figures in seven of those contests.
As he did with the Cleveland Cavaliers playing alongside LeBron James often, Green has been very productive in his role and complements Houston’s star players well.
Green is still an athletic wing player who can score from every level and plays solid defense, and with the Rockets, in their small-ball system, he’s even been effective predominantly as a small-ball center. That’s meshed with James Harden and Russell Westbrook really well.
His ability to be a factor on the inside and outside was on display in particular against the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this month when Green scored 22 points and grabbed six rebounds, while hitting five-of-nine from three-point range. Overall in the bubble, Green has been scoring 14.5 points per game on 51.8 percent shooting, and has thrived by Houston’s playmakers/their style.
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Green also adds a veteran presence to the Rockets locker room, and experience is always vital when it comes to the playoffs. Other rotational players for Houston, such as Danuel House Jr. and Ben McLemore, played well in their roles during the regular season.
Still, they lack playoff experience with just seven games of playoff experience combined.
As for Green, he has 60 games of playoff experience under his belt and has played with the likes of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Durant and even Westbrook. That experience level is exactly what a team like Houston needs to get over the hump.
Flashback to Game 7 of the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals, a series regarding LeBron of which I previously hit on, and Green stepped up alongside LeBron James as he scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds against the Boston Celtics.
A situation like that game in Boston two years ago could come up again this postseason, and Green has already proven himself in high-pressure playoff situations.
Green will need to continue his good play from the bubble, especially after it was reported Russell Westbrook would miss the first few games of the Rockets first round series due to a quad injury.
He may not be the same player that was drafted fifth overall back in 2007, and open heart surgery back in 2012 likely played into that, but Green can be a solid two-way player who makes teams pay for showing too much attention to Houston’s superstars. Moreover, it’s been really good to see the former Cleveland Cavaliers forward in Green play well in the NBA bubble in Orlando thus far.
It’ll be interesting to see what he can do in the postseason.