Danny Green has made himself expendable.

[DMC]

It's so amazing to me. The Spurs were playing really badly, Danny Green gets a pass, confidently hits a three, and is subbed out at the next dead ball by Pop. SMFH

Pop didn't want a close game. He didn't want a reason to play harder than what mattered, and lose anyhow.

[Cowboys_Wear_Spurs]

Ding, ding, ding, ding!

And due to his limitations, he can't punish teams with in between pull up jumpers like Klay, Kobe, Leonard, or a host of other wings who can shoot from the mid range.

That's the one thing I have been saying since the beginning of the season he needs to work on. If he developed that, he would be more of an offensive force than him driving and turning the ball over.

[Chinook]

I've said I consider hand-eye coordination a part of that equation. You're right that Klay and Danny have comparable athleticism, but the main difference between the two is ball handling and the in between game (Klay was the top wing scorer in college off the pick-and-roll) . I think this is one of the reasons Pop experimented with giving Danny a longer a leash this season, thinking, "If Klay Thompson can turn into a well rounded scorer, why can't Danny?" And the results have been poor. Why? Danny, for whatever reason, simply can't dribble. Klay can. Dribbling can be learned to an extent, but some guys just seem to lack the innate hand-eye coordination to be an effective ball handler at the NBA level.

Obviously, I'm not going to get too far into this since my response is so late. But as I said, I feel you're trying to slide in the fact that Green is limited (which he has always been, as has been known for years) as an explanation for his poor play to start the year. I have no issue conceding the first point. But I think Green has had too many great games for anyone to seriously think he's shooting poorly now for the year because he can't dribble.

Why is it silly? If it's not a lack of talent for skills most starting wings seem to have (high vertical, good ball handling, good finishing ability, average-to-above playmaking ability) that is holding Danny back, then what is it? Mental? Just a slump? Or just maybe he isn't the getting the wide open looks he once was because he's no longer the afterthought for opposing teams he once was. My main argument is that if he had those innate skills, he could protect himself from being run off the 3 point line because opponents would have to respect his in between game, like they do with Klay (Klay shoots about 43% from the mid range, which is a strong percentage. Danny typically hovers around 30%).

Yeah, the real "limit" to Green is his streakiness, which seems to have everything to do with concentration and confidence. If he were consistently the dead-eye he was against the Rockets, he'd be making Matthews money. But he'll miss wide-open shots for seemingly no reason one night and make off-dribble threes while getting fouled on the break the next night. And neither result is surprising. I don't know why his confidence is so shaky, but it is.

Despite my criticisms, I don't want Danny benched. He's still an elite defender (I don't trust his RPM metrics on that end), but there's no denying his offensive struggles have more to do with his limitations than with anything else. Spot up shooters aren't that hard to defend.

You seem too smart not to know that Green's job is to be defended, not really to score. It's easy to take a spot-up guy out the game, but it requires you to almost permanently take a defender out of the scheme to shadow the elite ones. And some players can't do it well (Green is actually one of those guys himself). So teams sometimes put their best defender on Danny to keep him locked up. I expect to see Ariza on Danny if the Rockets and Spurs meet up in the playoffs, which give Kawhi a tremendous advantage. And that's simply because the Rockets know that Kawhi scoring 17-21 points on 12-17 shots is much better than letting Danny go for 15-18 on eight. That reasoning is why the 2013 AND 2014 Finals unfolded the way it did. Danny showed Spo that he could pretty much beat the Heat by himself if had the openings, so they started committing to stopping him after five games, and Kawhi went off for the next seven once he got less attention.

That Green can command star-level gravity despite being the fourth or fifth option is his value to the offense, not his points. I don't care how hard Simmons tries or how badly he wants it, he won't ever do that.

[SAGirl]

He’s very important for us because of his defense and energy,” Ginobili said. “But we need him to make shots.”

“Always nice to make shots,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “That’s what Danny does. Shooters keep shooting, and eventually they start to fall.”