Ultimate teammate

Newcomer Green happy to be leader with young Raptors

Through nine NBA seasons with two of the league’s best teams, a couple of stops in the NBA G-league, and a brief stint in Slovenia, Danny Green has seen virtually everything an NBA training camp can throw at him.

Freedom however, feels a bit unfamiliar.

Just a couple of days into Raptors camp, the 31-year-old was asked whether he’s found anything surprising about Toronto, and he barely paused.

“The freedom they have, the freedom everybody has,” Green said. “Not just the guards but the bigs as well. The freedom to handle the ball, the freedom to do other things offensively.”

Green was the almost-overlooked second player in the blockbuster deal that brought Kawhi Leonard to Toronto.

The six-foot-six shooting guard arrived from San Antonio with the reputation of an athletic defender who’s also lethal from three-point range. But it’s partly the latter that has him excited about Toronto.

If his defence earned him major minutes in his eight seasons with the Spurs, he had to sacrifice some of his game to fit into San Antonio’s style.

Green said the Spurs’ bread and butter was an inside/outside game with an offence that largely ran through Leonard and Lamarcus Aldridge.

“Here we are more perimeteroriented. It’s a lot easier playing and flowing and a lot more freedom. We are looking more for the perimeter shot,” Green said.

“(Aldridge) led us in plenty of games and plenty of seasons so it was only right to look for him first. Kawhi was also great in the post. We played at a little slower pace the last couple of years and we looked inside first and then out.

“Now it’s more push the pace, get up and down and get more looks from the perimeter. You don’t have to hold back as much if you’re me, secondguessing which shots I should or shouldn’t take.”

It was a few minutes into Leonard’s long-awaited introductory press conference on Monday when somebody posed a question to Green.

“Oh, you included me, OK,” he replied through a grin. “I was wondering if I was going to get to talk today.”

Green’s quick wit provided some levity on what could have been a tense afternoon.