March 14, 2009
By Adam
Lucas
ATLANTA--Over the last four years, we have seen Danny Green dance. We have seen him smile. We have seen him posterize people.
Also, he has struggled. But even when his family situation was being plastered all over the national media, he never seemed to be visibly affected. He's always had that same grin, that same carefree outlook.
Sure, when he's with his teammates in one-on-one situations, he's occasionally admitted how difficult it's been at times over the last four years. But the public has never seen that.
Until now.
Green shot 3-of-25 in the Georgia Dome over the past two days. That production severely handicapped Carolina's offense, which was already without Ty Lawson and essentially had to function without two starters. After 32 games, it is not exactly news that without offense from two key players, Carolina is not the best team in America. Green missed long jumpers. He missed midrange jumpers. In one particularly maddening stretch in the second half, he even missed three straight layups.
"I don't know, man," said a visibly distraught Green when asked why point-blank shots would suddenly stop falling. "I think I was just rushing it. I rushed everything offensively today. When I caught it and I was open I got too excited and I rushed it. Then you miss a couple and you start to lose a little confidence."
Danny Green without confidence is like Superman without his cape or Samson without his flowing hair or Roy Williams without his Sprite Zero. Without it, he's not the same person. When he's playing well, that confidence overflows and makes the impossible--like jumping over a defender to slam home a one-handed dunk--possible. When he's not playing well, that confidence is what makes him keep shooting, what enables him to believe the next shot will always be a swish.
Saturday, for the first time, he looked like he doubted the outcome of his next shot.
"I feel like I let my team down," he said. "I'm supposed to be one of the senior leaders. I'm supposed to make plays to help control the game. I wasn't a factor for my team today."
Actually, that's not true. Late in the game, at the exact moment that Williams always tells his team they need to get just one stop, it was Green who came up with what looked like it would be the game's key defensive play. Down by two with two minutes to play, Green forced a turnover and then drew the fifth foul on the pesky Chris Singleton. He went to the line and knocked down a pair of free throws to tie the score and set up the late-game drama.
He's always been about more than just offense, even though his offense is sometimes blindingly evident. Two bad days in a dome--and, look, Carolina fans know all about bad dome days from key perimeter players, so if he wants to get rid of those before the first week in April, that's just fine--don't change that.
When a player is scuffling, Tar Heel players often say that he's "funked." Missing a few shots doesn't make a player funked. Thinking about those shots, however, can make a player funked.
Green is the one player on the roster who might be immune to funk. That's what Marcus Ginyard told him yesterday when the two seniors had a moment to chat after the Virginia Tech game, and it's what he's likely already told him by the time you read this.
"The things he's been through far outweigh two bad shooting games," Ginyard said. "The things he's had to go through both in his life and in basketball over the past four years have given him a tremendous amount of growth. These were two tough games. But he's been through so much more than this. He is a big time player. And he'll be back."
At almost the same time Ginyard was saying this, a forlorn Green was over in the corner of the locker room wearing just his undershirt and his game shorts. Assistant coach Joe Holladay walked up to him.
"I'm not worried about you," Holladay said. "We've got some big games left."
"Six games," Green said definitively, and for the first time he looked something other than miserable. "We've got six games left."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
