San Antonio Spurs 3-point marksman Danny Green has seen his shooting percentage from long range trail off since hitting a career-best 43.6 percent of his 3s in 2011-12. Last season, he connected on 33.2 percent of his 3-pointers, although he did up that mark to 50 percent in the playoffs. Green recently had LASIK surgery to help his vision and is hoping that — and other things — will help his game in 2016-17, writes Michael C. Wright of ESPN.com:
San Antonio Spurs guard Danny Green refuses to visualize potential eyesight issues as the culprit in a subpar 2015-16 campaign, in which he finished with the second-lowest three-point shooting percentage of his career (33.2).
Still, that didn’t stop the eighth-year veteran from undergoing LASIK eye surgery shortly after the team’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals.
“My eyesight wasn’t that bad to begin with,” Green said.
Perhaps that’s true. But Green knocked down just 30.1 percent from three-point range during the 2015 calendar year; this, after connecting on better than 40 percent from long range over his first four seasons in San Antonio.
San Antonio waited and waited throughout the season for Green to shake the slump. Then, it appeared Green’s struggles were finally subsiding when in January he nailed 49.1 percent from long range. But after the All-Star break, Green watched his three-point shooting percentage sink to 27.7 percent.
Then, surprisingly, Green found his shot again in the playoffs; hitting 24 of his 48 attempts from three-point range.
“I’m not gonna say it was [vision issues],” Green said. “I got the procedure done, [and] it helps. But that wasn’t the reason why I was shooting poorly. Some seasons, you have good ones. Sometimes, you have bad ones. Sometimes, it’s due to adjusting to chemistry. Sometimes it’s due to injury. Sometimes, you just don’t shoot it well. Sometimes, it’s mental.
“For me, it’s just really building that confidence back up mentally, physically staying healthy, fitting into this system and jelling with these guys as fast as possible so that I’m adjusted well, and can pick and choose my spots so I don’t shoot as poorly as I did last year.”
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Green’s plus-2.9 defensive rating in ESPN’s real plus-minus (RPM) led all shooting guards, as he blocked 2.4 percent of opponents’ 2-point attempts.
“I just beat him up, and say, ‘What have you done for us lately?'” Gregg Popovich joked. “I’m not sure that [LASIK surgery is] gonna [be] a significant factor in his recovery. He’ll be fine. He always plays good defense. So he’ll make more shots this year. It just happens. It’s called sports. Sometimes, hitters don’t hit.”
