With all the excitement and promise of the Orlando Magic’s roster, the veteran players can be forgotten about. This is a mistake, as each one of them will bring something to the team once the season begins, even Willie Green. While the likes of Luke Ridnour and Channing Frye will get most of the attention, there is another player who could very well over perform on the team.
His name is Willie Green, and he brings more to the table than just being a guy on the end of the bench.
There were many things the Magic sorely missed last season, but a decent offensive weapon was the most glaring of these things the team lacked. In fact, having Arron Afflalo, an excellent two-way guard not overly known for his offensive game, be the leading scorer on the team tells you all you need to know.
Now, Green is not going to take Afflalo’s place, and he’s not going to be a starter either, but coming off the bench will be the right fit both for him and this team.
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At 33, Green has the right amount of experience to know how to get his points. He’s the kind of player who you don’t even notice has checked into the game, certainly it felt this way when he played with the Los Angeles Clippers. But a quick look at the box score and you’d see he had something like eight points and an assist in his limited time on the court.
It’s maybe not the ideal way to be known, but Green has kind of created a niche for himself, one that the Magic are quite clever to exploit.
This Magic team’s second unit is going to struggle to score big time this year. So having Green, who averaged five points in 15.8 minutes a contest last year is going to help. Look, these are big numbers to get excited about, but every little helps. Green also attempted 2.7 two point shots and 2.2 three points shots a game too, and this shows us a couple of things.
He doesn’t need a ton of shots or touches to put some points on the board, and he knows how to get his points too. It also shows us that he takes only slightly less three point shots than two points shots, and considering he didn’t have that in his game when he entered the league, it will spread the floor nicely for the more athletic players like Aaron Gordon who get to the hole often.
Defensively, maybe he doesn’t get enough credit either. As a shooting guard he is undersized, but defends with a nice intensity. Again when you consider he will be coming up against second units more often than not, he could be valuable to the team on this end of the court.
His ball handing is a nice bonus, so much so that he could probably play the point guard position if the team was really stuck as well.
Should the likes of Victor Oladipo have a rough night or be playing the one himself, Green could even start. Indeed, he started nine games for the Clippers last season and sixty the year before that, and he didn’t look out of place doing it either. He’s getting on a bit to ever be a go to guy, but there is no reason to think he can’t average about twelve points a game in the right sets and with some more minutes to his name every night.
So while Willie Green isn’t the name anybody has been talking about, his capture proves the Magic are trying to build a more complete team. That is the bigger picture here. Yes he’s not a starter and yes he’ll be down the depth chart considerably, and yet there is still much to like about his game.
If he is billed as one of Orlando’s weaker players, their depth may surprise some teams this year.
Off the court of course he will be expected to mentor the younger players and be a positive voice when times are tough for this team. Don’t kid yourself either, they will be tough for periods of the season, losses piling up quite quickly. His relative lack of use in Los Angeles last season as well means he could probably play closer to 30 minutes a night if called upon, you figure he’s got to be fresh and raring to go.
Green has a neat mid-range game as well, and while that shot as a whole is dying, somebody like Victor Oladipo could do worse than watch Green and add it to his growing arsenal of moves.
At the end of the day, this is a low risk move that has gotten little attention. If it goes flat, well no real harm done. But if Green becomes relatively important to this young team, both his and general manager Rob Hennigan’s reputations will grow as a result.
What’s not to like here?