Danny Green’s Crunch-Time Symphony
How the Spurs’ marksman resurrected his jump shot just in time to save his team in Game 1
By Steve Pierce
Danny Green is used to playing the hero.
A year after he lit up the Miami Heat from long-range with an historic barrage early in the 2013 NBA Finals, Green returned with a vengeance Thursday to torment the visitors from South Beach yet again on the same stage.
With LeBron James forced out of the game by painful leg cramps, the Spurs took advantage, riding a 4-for-4 fourth quarter shooting performance from Green (including 3-for-3 from deep) to a 105-90 victory. It was truly a dazzling performance from the one-time journeyman turned elite marksman, as Green threw dagger after dagger in quick succession to close out the short-handed Heat when it mattered most.
But Green’s shooting display was even more notable if you consider the game in its full context. Yes, he effectively torched the roof of the (already sweltering) AT&T Center with bomb after bomb in the contest’s closing minutes. That did happen — but those heroics belie an equally salient truth:
Danny Green was unequivocally terrible through three quarters.
The numbers tell the story: 0-for-5 from the field, 0-for-4 from beyond the 3-point line, with virtually no positive offensive impact on the proceedings. Green looked frustrated and ineffective through the game’s first 36 minutes — not unlike how he looked in games 6 and 7 of last year’s Finals, when the Heat finally figured out how to stop him and used that breakthrough to key their final push to the title.
It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was downright ugly. But something obviously happened before the fourth quarter, something that unleashed Green and enabled him to return to form. What changed?
In a word: Mechanics.
A jump shot is a temperamental thing. When done properly, it’s the physical equivalent of a symphony, with countless body parts all working in concert with perfect timing to create a beautiful end-product.
However, there’s a dark side to this analogy too. Also like a symphony, if one (or, God forbid, more than one) of those body parts gets even a little out of whack, it will most likely turn the entire ensemble into an off-kilter, screeching mess.
That’s what happened to Danny Green during the first three quarters of Game 1 — and there are a couple of key culprits.
The Set-Up
Before any upward motion begins, every jump shot starts from one of two foundational positions — a relatively stationary, catch-and-shoot spot-up position, or a moving, off-the-dribble pull-up position.
Green excels at the former. So far in the 2014 playoffs, he is shooting a blistering 52.3 percent on catch-and-shoot 3-point jumpers — good for fourth in the league among players who average more than three such attempts per game. If Danny can set his feet and get a semi-decent look at the basket, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going in.
On the contrary, Green has been much less efficient on 3-point jumpers of the more difficult pull-up variety, converting only 38.1 percent of those attempts during the playoffs. That’s to be expected. When you introduce to the equation rapid movement, an engaged defender, and the complex aerobic process of having to gather a bouncing ball and shoot it all in one fluid motion, the degree of difficulty goes through the roof. It’s just a really tough shot, regardless of how easy Stephen Curry makes it look.
In that light, shooting over 38 percent on pull-up 3-point jumpers is nothing to be ashamed of — but the massive 14-point drop-off from Green’s otherworldly catch-and-shoot levels is obviously notable. If you’re the Spurs, you want Danny Green taking as many spot-up jumpers as possible, while minimizing the number of off-the-dribble looks he lets fly. It’s just basic math.
So when he struggled to connect in the first three quarters of Game 1, guess which kinds of shots were creeping into Danny’s shot selection?
You guessed it.
With the clock running down at the end of the first quarter, Green catches the ball on the left wing with a long-limbed Shane Battier closing out on him. Green immediately pump-fakes and takes one dribble past Battier before launching a rushed three with his defender recovering quickly to his shooting-hand side. He gets the shot off but it clangs harmlessly off the iron. Credit Battier for playing some inspired defense, but I doubt this is the look Gregg Popovich was dreaming of when he called this play.
On the contrary, this is just a dumb shot. There was no inspired defense here. Green just lost his head and dribbled right at Rashard Lewis in transition, ultimately throwing up a heavily contested brick rather than pulling the ball out and working the offense for a better look. ABC’s cameras didn’t catch it, but I like to imagine Pop turned around in disgust after this shot and yelled so loudly and profanely at someone on the San Antonio bench that a crisis psychologist had to be summoned immediately.
The Timing
Green’s problems in the early-goings were not strictly limited to his newfound preference for pull-up jumpers. Even when he got catch-and-shoot looks, the timing was often just a split second off, causing him to rush a shot a little too quickly or add an extra hitch in his release. While neither of those things may seem like monumental problems in and of themselves, in the context of the complex balancing act that is the jumpshot as a whole, they matter a great deal.
To hearken back to our earlier analogy, if one instrument section or even one individual musician in a symphony gets a split-second out of rhythm with his colleagues, it is blatantly obvious and instantly recognizable to the audience. You can hear that one persistently errant squawk and it grates on you, single-handedly torpedoing the performance.
The same is true of a jump shot. With so many moving body parts involved in the shot and the powerful pull of momentum threatening to throw it all off course at any given moment, precise timing is key. If a pass comes a hair late or the player bobbles the ball slightly on the catch, that seemingly insignificant millisecond of hesitation creates a chain-reaction that throws off the shot and turns a beautiful work of art into an ugly brick.
Sometimes this grotesque metamorphosis is virtually unavoidable. When a panicked teammate shovels the ball your way with seconds left on the clock, it’s not uncommon for the perfect mechanics — honed by a shooter through thousands of identical practice shots — don’t quite come out the way they did in that empty gym.
The ball arrives, the clock nears zero, things get rushed. It happens — and it happened to Danny Green in Game 1.
Sometimes Manu just tosses you the hot potato in the corner at the end of the half and you’ve got two seconds to heave something toward the rim. You’re rushing to beat the clock, you’re moving too fast, and your finely-tuned mechanics get a little out of sorts.
You throw up a brick. Again, it happens. Could Green have been more prepared to shoot when he caught the ball? Sure. He was still sliding to his left when the ball arrived, so he didn’t exactly begin the shot with a solid base. But all things considered, this isn’t anything more than the product of an inconvenient situation.
This, on the other hand, is just not being ready to shoot before the catch. As Tony Parker begins his drive, Green needs to be prepared for the distinct possibility that his man will slide down in an attempt to stop Parker’s penetration — thus momentarily freeing Green for a wide-open look. Considering how aggressively the Heat help on defense, this should be considered a near-certainty.
By the time Parker starts to make his crossover dribble, Green’s hands should already be up, ready to receive the pass that is almost certainly coming. His knees should already be bent, ready to fire off a shot as soon as the window of opportunity opens, however briefly.
Obviously, this isn’t what happens. When Parker makes his move, Green is standing straight up, with his hands by his side. He’s just drifting along the 3-point line. He’s not even facing the basket.
Hence, when the pass is delivered a second later, Green’s not ready to shoot with precision. He’s not prepared to immediately step into a smooth, mechanical jump shot that he can make in his sleep. Instead, he’s forced to readjust while the ball is in the air, reorienting himself to the rim as he catches, which in turns forces him to start his shot with an awkward hop-step that gets this train moving full speed ahead to Brick City.
It’s the little things. Bending your knees before the ball arrives may seem like a ridiculous thing to fixate on, but in a game where a shooter’s stroke is so dependent on consistently reproducing the exact rhythm that has been purposely ingrained in his muscle memory through tens of thousands of hours of practice, that split-second can make all the difference. In those “bang-bang” moments, timing is everything.
Of course, as fascinating as it may be to comb through each of Green’s micro-mistakes in the opening three quarters, one fact remains: the man eventually figured it out (and then some) when it mattered most.
It was like an entirely different player came out for the final frame. Gone were the contested pull-up jumpers in transition and the listless floating around the perimeter with no sign of life, let alone preparation to shoot. In its place was a confident shooter who moved with purpose. In its place was a sniper whose finger was poised to squeeze the trigger at a moment’s notice. In its place was Danny Green.
It all started with a beautiful skip pass from Boris Diaw. Ready and waiting in the opposite corner, Green calmly received the pass and stepped smoothly into a textbook jumper he’s made more times than he can count. Nothing but twine.
No dribbles. No weird hop-steps. No turning to face the basket while trying to catch the ball. Just a straight up-and-down jump shot with minimal body motion and a flawless release — each piece in perfect harmony with its counterparts.
It continued with another wide-open look manufactured by a savvy Diaw dime. Again, Green was ready to receive the pass. Knees bent. Shoulders square. All that was left was to patiently step into a routine three and bury it like a preternaturally talented basketball-playing dog would bury his bone.
That bucket would give the Spurs the lead with just over five minutes to play — one they would never relinquish. But Danny wasn’t quite done throwing daggers.
He added one more a minute later — a veritable hydrogen bomb of a shot from the wing, set up by a beautiful set play drawn up by Pop coming out of a timeout. Green hardly even looked at the rim before releasing his payload. It didn’t matter. By that point, the riddle had been solved and the rhythm was back. Everything felt good. He was back in his groove. Visual confirmation of the target was unnecessary.
The symphony had reached its crescendo.
The sweaty, overheated San Antonio crowd exploded as the ball splashed through the net, pushing the home team’s lead to five. Finally, after a seesaw game that saw 13 lead changes and with James watching from the bench in pain, the wheels finally seemed to be coming off for the Heat.
They would detach completely over the next few minutes as the Spurs finished the game on a 15-3 run, but the man who loosened the lug nuts was undoubtedly Danny Green. After laboring through three horrendous quarters marked by bad mechanics and even worse timing, the marksman had finally found his stroke — and just in the nick of time.
Moving forward, it remains to be seen if Green, in concert with his coaches and teammates, will be able to find more of the same looks he got in the closing minutes of Game 1 — or if that pesky Miami defense will again force him out of his rhythm and into the mechanical morass of the first three quarters.
What is clear is that Spurs fans everywhere better hope to hear the sweet sounds of Maestro Green’s perfectly tuned symphony for the rest of the series.
Steve Pierce is a mild-mannered Washington, DC-based communications consultant by day, but transforms into a rabid basketball junkie by night. You can follow him on Twitter at @StevePierceNBA.
