Danny Green, three-time NBA champion, announces his retirement

Danny Green played 15 seasons in the NBA and finished with 1,577 3-pointers, 43rd in NBA history.

(AP) — Danny Green, the sharpshooter who won an NCAA championship at North Carolina before helping three different franchises win NBA championships, announced his retirement as a player on Thursday.

Green won NBA titles with San Antonio in 2014, Toronto in 2019 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020 and was a starter for all three of those clubs. He averaged 8.7 points in parts of 15 professional seasons.

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— Danny Green (@DGreen_14) October 10, 2024

“I’m officially saying goodbye to the game of basketball and the NBA,” Green said on his YouTube channel. “It was a great run. I'm very proud to be able to leave the game. I'm happy with that. I wasn't at first, but I think it's one of those things – when I turned 37, the body started reacting a little differently.”

Green ranks 43rd in NBA history with 1,577 3-pointers. He is one of only 12 players to make that many three-pointers and shoot at least 40% from distance.

He's also ninth in postseason 3-pointers made with 315 of them.

“My body let me know. I got little calf strains here and there,” Green said. “But also as you get older, teams don’t call as often. Unfortunately, my services were no longer as in demand as they were when I was younger. It was a hell of a ride.”

You could have called it an unexpected ride.

Green is one of only four players – Kyle Korver, Rashard Lewis and Trevor Ariza are the others – to have made as many 3-pointers as him without being a first-round draft pick. Green was the 46th overall pick in the 2009 draft by Cleveland, who waived him after one season.

Green was eventually signed by San Antonio and played as a starter for seven seasons, helping the Spurs win the title in 2014. He was traded to Toronto as part of the Kawhi Leonard deal and was a starter on the Raptors team that won a title in 2014, 2019 and was a starter again on the Lakers team that won a title in the pandemic-hit 2020 season.

“People ask me, 'How did you learn to be a winner?' How do you become a leader?'” Green said. “And it’s the people before me, the people who taught me, my coaches. They prepared me to be successful because at the end of the day, I'm just a normal kid. I had a certain height, but I wasn't particularly athletic. I just worked really hard and had the good resources around me to learn how to be professional and do things the right way.”

He tore his ACL and ACL when teammate Joel Embiid fell on him during Philadelphia's playoff loss to Miami in May 2022, and only appeared in 17 more games over the next two seasons – four of which were playoff games. games.

Green said he hopes to work in the media and hinted that he may be considering a few options.

“I’m looking forward to the next chapter, the next journey,” Green said.