Before former NBA wing Danny Green made a name for himself in the league while playing for teams such as the San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Lakers, he spent his rookie season with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Green didn’t see the court all that much as a first-year player, but he was fortunate to be part of a great team. The Cavaliers were led by forward LeBron James, big man Shaquille O’Neal and others, and they won 61 games in the 2009-10 regular season and secured the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
It’s not uncommon for NBA rookies to serve as errand boys for the veteran players, and Green said that O’Neal made him drive nearly one-and-a-half hours round trip to Krispy Kreme when he was a neophyte.
“So, I had to get the donuts by myself, and at the time in Ohio, there was only one Krispy Kreme, and it was like 40 minutes outside of Cleveland and somewhere in Ohio,” Green said. “You had to drive 40 minutes back, and you had to be to the arena before everybody else, about two-and-a-half hours beforehand. So, waking up six in the morning to get donuts was crazy. If you don’t have his donuts, obviously they kick the balls in the stands.”
O’Neal was still a serviceable starting center at the time he played with Green, but he wasn’t exactly the same player he was at his peak with the Lakers, when he was stacking up championships playing alongside guard Kobe Bryant. He put up 12.0 points and 6.7 rebounds per contest in his lone season in a Cavaliers uniform.
Green played in just 20 games with the Cavaliers as a rookie and averaged 2.0 points, 0.9 rebounds and 0.3 assists per game in that span.
His first NBA season ended in the second round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs, as the Cavaliers lost to the Boston Celtics six games.
That series loss for the Cavaliers marked the end of James’ first stint playing for the Cavaliers, and Cleveland also decided to waive Green around the start of the 2010-11 season.
Green was eventually able to find a home with the Spurs and cement himself as an NBA player after multiple attempts to stick around with San Antonio as a youngster. Of course, over the years, he ended up having a strong career in the NBA that included three titles.
Even if Green didn’t have a notable rookie season on the court, his maiden campaign was still noteworthy for the fact that he played with two of the greatest players in the history of the NBA.