2. Gerald Green
Gerald Green’s late season comments on his lack of playing time, combined with Jeff Hornacek’s and Green’s agent’s respective responses, make it very likely his days as a Sun are numbered.
“He never really seemed to get it going and then it comes to the point where, if you’re not scoring and if your defense isn’t picking up, it’s hard to stay in the game,” Hornacek told the Arizona Republic’s Paul Coro.
Perhaps motivated by Hornacek’s (relatively mild and mostly fair) critique, Green played out of his mind over his last five healthy games, averaging 21.6 points in 25.4 minutes a game. Green also acknowledged that he needs to improve defensively.
Yet despite the quibbling, there was Green on check out day preaching optimism.
“Yeah I’ve said that before, I do want to come back. I think they want me back too,” he said. “I just talked to Lon actually it was a good conversation, I’m a little positive about that so we’ll see where that takes us.”
With a moderate amount of cap space and Green’s stated intention to retire in Phoenix, it’s well within the Suns’ means to bring him back. It just doesn’t seem like they’d want to.
Green averaged 20.5 minutes per game before the All-Star break and 16 after (inflated by the final few games) despite no longer having to contend with Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas for minutes. Those two getting traded signified a shift from semi-contention to a (not stated) semi-rebuild, and Green doesn’t fit in with those plans.
His offensive win shares dropped from 4.2 last year to just 0.8 this season. His true shooting percentage is down from 58 percent to 52 percent this season. While some of that can be attributed to Green not playing with the same spacing this year, at age 29, he probably won’t hit those levels again.
Another issue is Green’s 8.9 percent assist rate (bottom 10 amongst qualified shooting guards), which accurately indicates that his eyes haven’t left the rim since he landed in Phoenix.
I actually have this weird feeling the Suns might want to resign Gerald Green since his stock sort of fell. Affordable and a good teammate.
— Kevin Zimmerman (@KZimmermanAZ) April 15, 2015
His unwillingness to move the ball and his positional overlap with Archie Goodwin and T.J. Warren leaves him unplayable among those three. The Suns have smartly prioritized developing their youth, leaving Green as the BICOHHC (break in case of emergency human heat check), a role he wasn’t content with down the stretch.
Green’s recent surge, and his exit interview comments make it plausible that the Suns would bring him back is he’s willing to sign at a discount.
But the combination of an inevitably reduced role and more enticing offers elsewhere likely means that Green is gone.
Next: No. 1