Green is embracing big chance in playoffs

One thing to know about Jeff Green as the Cavaliers gear up for what they hope is a fourth consecutive NBA Finals appearance — no matter how this postseason ends, he isn’t going to wake up one morning and say he’s tired of playing in LeBron James’ shadow.

Kyrie Irving stunned the basketball world nine months ago by asking the Cavaliers to trade him because he was tired of being second fiddle in the James Orchestra. The Cavs spent the entire 2017-18 regular reason trying to adjust without Irving and find the right combination of players to plow through the Eastern Conference playoffs and regain the championship they won in 2016 but lost to the Warriors last year.

Green signed with the Cavaliers for the NBA minimum of roughly $2.3 million as a free agent on July 11, about a week before Irving met with team management and asked to be traded. He has been the definition of a team player since the moment he put on a Cavaliers uniform.

The original plan was Green would come off the bench and replace Jae Crowder, one of the players acquired for Irving in the trade that sent Irving to Boston. Crowder did not fit in with the Cavs and was dealt to Utah at the Feb. 8 trading deadline.

Green started 13 of the final 16 games of the regular season for the Cavaliers, and unless Coach Tyronn Lue pulls a surprise, he will be in the starting lineup on April 15 when the Cavs host Indiana in the first game of their Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Green is 6-foot-9 and listed as a forward, but he is so tenacious a defender that Lue trusts him to guard any opponent.

“I just like his versatility,” Lue said recently. “I think defensive wise we can put him on [DeMar] DeRozan (Toronto Raptors), you can put him on John Wall, Bradley Beal (both with Washington Wizards). You can put him on [Victor] Oladipo (Indiana Pacers).

I just like that we can switch a lot of stuff and it gives us another ball handler on the floor too, so I just think it’s the right thing for us to start.”

Green has never been to the NBA Finals as a player. He certainly wasn’t going to reach the Finals with the Magic, so he is excited about the chance he has with the Cavaliers.

“I’m very excited for the opportunity,” Green said in the home team locker room at Quicken Loans Arena after the Cavaliers were beaten by the New York Knicks on April 11 in the final game of the regular season. “I’ve prepared myself mentally for the journey at hand. I just have to go out there and do my part to help our team get to that point.”

For Green to even be in this position is a miracle that has nothing to do with basketball.

Back in 2011 while he was playing for the Boston Celtics (Lue was an assistant coach with the Celtics at the time), doctors discovered Green had an aortic aneurysm, which means he had a bulge in his aorta — the major vessel that feeds blood to the body.

When Green talks about it, he admits he thought his career was finished. Instead, Dr. Lars Svensson of Cleveland Clinic performed a five-hour surgery in January of 2012 and saved not only Green’s career, but possibly his life.

Green was forced to sit out the entire 2011-12 season, but so what? He played all 82 games with the Celtics in 2012-13 with 17 starts and a year later started all 82 games and averaged 34.2 minutes a game.

“I just assumed (my career was over),” Green said recently on the HoopsHype Podcast. “In my head, it was done. I was thinking about how I was going to cope with that and what my next move was going to be. Then I had the interview with my surgeon, a month before the surgery and he told me that I would be allowed to continue playing without any problems. That eased my mind, but I still had a lot of doubt about my career when I was told I had to have the surgery.

“During rehab, I was always among older folks who’d had multiple heart surgeries and who were 50 years old and up. I was by far the youngest in my rehab class, but the experience definitely humbled me, made me appreciate life more and it helped me make sure that I value each day because I went through a life-threatening surgery. My life changed in a matter of seconds.”

The Celtics traded Green to Memphis in January of 2015. Thirteen months later he was traded to the Clippers. Five months after that he signed with Orlando. Now he is finishing up a one-year deal with the Cavaliers and wants to make the most of it.

“I’m going to be prepared for whatever Ty Lue wants me to do,” Green said. “My mindset is always the same; be aggressive and be in attack mode and adapt to any situation I’m needed.

“We’ve been through ups and downs with a lot of changes this season. It wasn’t going to come together overnight. I think we’ve adjusted well. We know where each other likes the ball on the floor. I’ve never been to the Finals, but I know it’s going to take a lot of work from each individual to get there.”

This will the sixth time Green has played on a team in the NBA playoffs. He was there once with Oklahoma City, twice with the Celtics, once with the Grizzlies and once the Clippers. The Celtics made it to the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2011. The Grizzlies were in the Western Conference semifinals in 2015. His teams were knocked out in the first round the other three years