Me at the Detroit Free Press:
"Green has combined one elite skill (rebounding) with a collection of useful ones (shooting, passing, intelligent defense) and hard to quantify but clearly identifiable traits like being a great teammate, being a vocal leader and playing with toughness and passion to become a really good NBA player who just so happens to be entering free agency in the off-season.And thanks to the Pistons unceremoniously ditching Josh Smith this week, they are poised to have quite the interesting off-season, one that should center on pursuit of the former Michigan State All-America and Mr. Basketball out of Saginaw High.The Warriors are the league’s best team this season, and it would be silly to credit too much of that to Green’s emergence — after all, they have an insanely talented and deep roster and a respected basketball mind coaching the team in Steve Kerr. But Green’s personality and production also key parts of what make the Warriors so entertaining to watch.For fans in Michigan who watched him in his high school and college career, the exuberance he plays with is infectious. His Saginaw and MSU teams played with a passion similar to his current Warriors team. Green has a naturally outgoing (and, to opponents, borderline annoying, not that that’s a bad thing) personality and exudes a confidence that his teams clearly rally around. The fact that he also happens to be an unselfish player adept at helping create good shots for others makes him the exact type of athlete that other players get excited to play with. In other words, he’s the exact opposite of every high profile signing the Pistons have made since 2009.Green is having a breakout season and has a skillset — particularly his perimeter shooting, passing and versatility to play multiple positions offensively and defensively — that will make him highly coveted. The fact that he’s a restricted free agent rather than unrestricted also would complicate efforts to sign him. Both of those factors, combined with his rapidly evolving all-around game, are likely to drive his price way up. But despite the Pistons’ string of bad luck with expensive free agent signings not panning out, Green’s price tag shouldn’t be a deterrent — he should be among their top targets.The Pistons have an obvious need for more talent at several positions, but they also have a need for smart players with personalities big enough to infuse a toughness and identity that has been noticeably lacking since the team was a title contender in the mid-2000s. Identifying productive talent is relatively easy (with apologies to Mr. Dumars). Finding players capable of leading a positive culture change is slightly more difficult. And finding players who have both attributes is rare, but Green is among those few who bring quantifiable amounts of production and an obvious ability to make teammates better. Those are qualities worth investing in.In a profile by Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry this week, Green articulated exactly why he’s a perfect fit for the improved culture the Pistons desperately need.“Wherever you go in Michigan you find that toughness. I don’t know if it’s the weather or the hard times,” Green told Goldsberry. “It’s like, if I can make it out of here, I had to be super tough. You mean to tell me I can’t go battle with somebody under the rim?”Green alone isn’t enough to transform the Pistons into a contending or even competent team. He also has an unbelievable situation in Golden State that would likely not be easy to leave, particularly to join one of the league’s worst-run franchises over the last decade. But if the Pistons are able to lure him away in the off-season, and Green can at the very least help create on-court passion, toughness and accountability, that would be a great start in remaking a product that fans would willingly re-invest in."
