The year is 2023, Jeff Green is 36 years old, and he just won an NBA championship as one of, let’s say, three bench players for his team that really factored into the NBA Finals. What?

I have an especially vivid memory from January 12th, 2015, when Jeff Green was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies. It was by a matter of seconds, I think, that my tweet followed the news from Woj: “NOOOOOOOOO.” This was around the time in the post-Rudy Gay era of the Grizzlies that they were searching for the right small forward to put around Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, Mike Conley and Tony Allen, cycling through players including Chandler Parsons and a mid-30s Tayshaun Prince. For full transparency, I thought Quincy Pondexter was going to be the answer, so really, it seems safe to say that they never found an answer. I was sure, though, that Jeff Green was not going to be the answer.

At the time, Green was coming from the Boston Celtics after a solid if low-stakes tenure as one of their primary scorers. However, he was inefficient, a below-average 3-point shooter and didn’t have a history of playing plus defense. What those Grit-and-Grind Grizzlies needed, and never came across, was a consistent 3-and-D wing — so, more or less Green’s opposite. His Memphis tenure was short and often frustrating, and he was gone a year later at the 2016 deadline. Safe to say, I really didn’t like Jeff Green, and I was probably an jerk about it online to boot. (Honestly, my bad, man.) I started to see shades of Jeff Green in other players, mostly young and projectable forward types that had the tools on paper but never the all-around skillset or efficiency to put everything together. Rudy Gay was a Jeff Green. Andrew Wiggins was a Jeff Green. You get the idea.

And still he stands the test of time. How many would’ve taken Jeff Green to see his career through to Year 16, much less as an anchor for a championship bench? Only four other players from his draft class in 2007 still play in the NBA at all — never mind that, among the more standard challenges presented by a career in pro basketball, Green also had to beat open heart surgery in 2012. Along with fellow league-wanderers like DeAndre Jordan and Ish Smith, he was one of the veteran voices for the Nuggets all season long, and also just one of two reserves to play in every single playoff game. It felt like once every few games or so, he was good for one of those moments that reminds us his old-man athleticism isn’t really all that old — a Jeff Green 2022-23 dunk reel goes harder than most 36-year-olds’ should. 

Since leaving the Grizzlies, Green has cycled through a new team almost every year until returning to the Nuggets for a second season this year. By all accounts, he’s been liked in every locker room he’s been in, and he’s probably been a positive, whatever his role, everywhere he’s gone — perhaps increasingly so.

I’m convinced that signing with the Houston Rockets in 2020 (first as a 10-day player, threatening to wink out of the league altogether) was one of those transformative moments that added years to his career. He went from power forward — a position that was already suiting him well, with fewer perimeter creation responsibilities — to full-time center in what may have been the NBA’s most open spread pick-and-roll attack ever. Playing with James Harden and shooters, Green’s job was as easy as running, rolling, catching and dunking. Time may have been catching up, but this helped him beat it. Ultimately, the sweep of time has been in his favor, recasting him from an athletic small forward to a mobile center. This worked for him in Brooklyn after Houston, and Denver now.

Guys like these, at this stage in their career, signing for the veteran minimum and taking backwards steps in role, usually fade to obscurity. Green’s career could have easily ended at any point after he left the Grizzlies to bounce around the league. (Without looking at his Basketball-Reference page, how many of the Jeff Green teams from the last 10 years can you name?) Instead, he’s done the opposite. He’s lasted, and he’s turned the lasting into a monument in itself. Better players than Green have been humbled in their twilight, but his has been strangely beautiful, as if perfectly preserved in amber. In its own way, this must be a validating form of existence, to sustain in a league where teams can be so vicious and cutthroat towards players competing for roster spots and especially so when it comes to veteran players on their last legs. Green has made the transformations to survive, and to turn what is often career limbo into career equilibrium instead. He just continues to contribute; his last few years have been good ones, plain and simple.

It’s funny, too, because with the Nuggets, the backup center was probably supposed to be somebody else. DeAndre Jordan held the role at the start of the year but was excised from the rotation early. Zeke Nnaji was the young third-stringer who could’ve won the job but didn’t. (I really feel like Zeke Nnaji should have played more, though.) Thomas Bryant, acquired at the trade deadline for three second-rounders, was more or less non-existent. Green has clung on at every turn. Maybe it isn’t sexy, but it’s been consistent, and that seems to have been a quality in short supply for the 2022-23 Denver Nuggets center depth. In this fashion, he forges on. Who knows what’s next for Green, whether he wants to run it back or call it a career as a champion, but if he comes back, I don’t doubt that he can still give a good 15 minutes per game. He’s proven me wrong enough.