Green is back on solid footing
Wing returns from ankle injury with best game of the season
Gerald Green immediately knew something was wrong. But his ankle, bent in ways that body parts are not supposed to twist, was not his foremost concern.
He had chased a loose ball into the backcourt when the Spurs’ Quincy Pondexter dove to beat Green to it, rolling over Green’s right ankle. Green bounced up to argue with official Sean Corbin that he was fouled, only then realizing the moment would cause him to lose more than a possession.
Green tried to keep playing in San Antonio, but his night was soon over after seven minutes and one shot. He would miss most of the Rockets’ next three games.
When he and the Rockets were struggling most, Green had to sit out. But given the wild fluctuations of fortune in his career, most recently on the upswing with his return to his hometown team and a quick agreement on a new contract for this season, Green was not going to fret too much about a sprained ankle, even in such a rocky start to the season.
“I knew it, but I just didn’t think (about) it,” Green said of the inward turn to an ankle that could have been much worse. “God has blessed me. Wherever I was, I’ve kind of been healthy for the most part of my career. I didn’t know what to expect being injured. I’m OK now, so I don’t want to even think about that stuff. But I knew
it was going to be a problem where I was going to be out.”
The timing was not good. The Rockets were on their way to a second consecutive offensively challenged loss. Green had begun the season making 35.8 percent of his shots, 25 percent of his 3pointers.
Signed to a 10-day contract last season when the Rockets were overrun by injuries, he had given them a jolt of scoring and an emotional lift before finishing the season on the edge of the rotation. The Rockets believed they could move on from small forwards Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute in part because, along with the addition of James Ennis III, they believed in moving Green up a spot and into the mix.
When he and Eric Gordon began the season struggling with their shots, the changes at the wing positions stood out, with the poor shooting of a pair of key shooters on the list of issues that came all at once.
When Green returned to the rotation Saturday, he had his best offensive game of the season, making six of 10 shots, including five of eight from beyond the 3point line. Green had averaged 4.6 points on 27.3 percent shooting in his previous seven games before he became just the eighth player in NBA history to make at least five 3-pointers in less than 14 minutes.
“It was cool to see a couple balls go in the rim,” Green said. “It’s even cooler, though, (that) I feel like our team is starting to figure some things out.”
More than “cool,” Green’s shooting could help fill out a rotation that had become perilously thin when he was hurt while Carmelo Anthony and the Rockets were beginning their breakup. With Green in the mix, Gary Clark can play more of his minutes at power forward, spelling P.J. Tucker, who before the Rockets’ run of blowouts had averaged 39.7 minutes per game for four games.
More than that, it would add a weapon to a bench that is last in the NBA in scoring.
“It’s really important,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “It just takes a lot of pressure off the main guys to do it every night. They can’t do it every night, although it’s pretty close. If they’re not rolling, somebody can pick up the slack. Or if everybody’s rolling, we’re really good.
“It’s good to have Gerald back and doing what he does.”
The return of Green’s good health and shooting touch is in keeping with the turnaround of the Rockets as a whole. He believed it was coming all along. But as he described the Rockets’ season, he could have been talking about his own.
“This is going to show us our tenacity,” Green said. “This team, we’re never going to stop. We know we had adversity. We’re going to fight through it. We believe in each other. We know what we can do. We were in a rough patch. We’re over it now.
“I think a lot of guys in the beginning of the season were still living off what we did last year, including me. We needed to get hit in our mouth a few times. We know once we start throwing punches, we’re going to knock folks out.
“I’m glad we’re finally able to get back on our feet, get games right. We still have a lot of games to go. It’s good to finally be back on track.”