Seth Curry and Danny Green Are the Weirdest Starting Wing Duo in the NBA
Seth Curry and Danny Green Are the Weirdest Starting Wing Duo in the NBA
Only the Sixers would have something so weird.
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Ah, the allure of veteran stability. When we procured Danny Green and Seth Curry over the summer -- in a pair of deals celebrated by Sixers Twitter as if it was Boston trading for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett in quick succession -- the biggest win of the moves seemed to be the added shooting and spacing around Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. But beyond that, the greatest appeal was in adding a couple of seasoned NBA pros who'd bounced around the league, carved out niches for themselves, and understood how to play the game. We knew they weren't going to be All-Stars for us, but we also knew they'd be solid, dependable, predictable. We knew who they were as players by now, and we knew what they brought to the table.
Nope! Wrong, wrong, wrong. We knew nothing about Seth Curry or Danny Green. The players we surmised they'd been all their careers as they played for half the teams in the NBA between them were not the players that showed up in Philadelphia. What we have now with them is something the Sixers are, in fact, much more familiar with -- a couple of the biggest player weirdos currently patrolling the wing in the Association.
Seth started off the season so scorchingly hot from absolutely everywhere on the field that, as Steph was chilly to start the season, we wondered if we had somehow gotten the better Curry brother (hahahahahahah no not really jk but also maybe?) for the price of Josh Richardson's next bricklaying contractual assignment (sorry Josh still love you) and a second-rounder. But even then, playing as the "Faded Pictures"-case version of himself, he didn't really look like the guy we expected. He passed and pump-faked a lot. He ducked defenders and drove to the hoop. He appeared perfectly content to pass, even when he didn't totally have to -- unusually conscience-stricken for a hired gunner.
And he seemed, well, kinda chill. Relaxed. Like he was happy to have the game come to him. The Sixers have never had a chill shooter before. Jodie Meeks was perpetually jittery and over-caffeinated. Nik Stauskas always looked 60% overconfident and 40% cripplingly insecure. J.J. Redick flailed and over-exerted himself like a 6th grader trying to intimidate a bunch of 5th graders during bombardment intramurals. Hollis Thompson seemed to know that the game his three-point shooting dropped a percentage point below 40, his NBA career was over. Every Sixers shooter prior to Seth Curry was either saving the whales or nuking the rainforest with each made three. Seth Curry looked like he'd rather be fishing.
That's the thing, really: Despite having the highest career percentage from deep going into this season of any player in NBA history, Seth Curry doesn't seem to enjoy shooting all that much. He approaches bombing from deep like most people approach brushing their teeth -- he'll do it because he has to, but he'll use any excuse not to. I don't know if he was like this on other teams -- his lower-than-you'd-think 3PA rates at his previous stops suggests he was maybe never quite the remorseless outlaw from range that we sorta assumed -- or if he's going out shy just to fit in with his forever shooting-confounded new ballclub. But it never stops being strange to have a guy whose calling card is shooting only actually fire away when he has a Horfian amount of time to freely lock and load.
Now he's slumping. Whether he's still suffering the after-effects of being COVID-positive or just regressing to the mean he was always going to come down to, Seth's been pretty brutal from the field of late, shooting just 39% from the field (and 33% from three) over his last seven games. (He's even missed three of his last six free throws, after making 43 of his first 44 on the year.) Honestly, that doesn't really bother me a ton -- it's not like we haven't seen streaky shooters before, and even the best of the best usually have a run or two like this a season. In a lot of ways, a game where Seth goes 1-13 from the floor (1-7 from deep) is less frustrating than one where he goes 3-6 from the floor and 1-3 from deep. Having one of the greatest shooters of all-time on your team and him barely ever wanting to pull the trigger is some real George Costanza shit.
Then there's Danny Green. I've written before about his co-Lakers-import Dwight Howard and what a rollercoaster rooting for him has been this season. With Danny, though, it's less a rollercoaster than a Tower of Terror: steady, steady, steady until it plummets you straight to the bottom without warning, screaming all the way down. (I assume anyway -- I wouldn't go on a Tower of Terror ride, that nonsense sounds fucking miserable.) I really just can't get over him. I didn't know players like this even existed: three-and-D specialists, heady players whose calling card is a general sense of baseline veteran competence, and who play like that 95% of the time -- but 2-3 times a game, make an error so dumbfounding even the team's rookies two-way have to give the coaching staff a puzzled "uhhh you saw that too, right?" glance.
Danny Green's mistakes are almost never of the common variety. It's barely ever ah, he was a little too slow on that defensive rotation or man, he really should've made the extra pass there or ehh he probably complained a little too much about that no-call when he needed to get back on D. Nah, Danny generally knows where to be on both sides of the court, disrupts defensively where he can on the perimeter, moves the ball well, hits most of the shots he should. Rather, his mistakes are singular catastrophes. They're more Oh, that's right, there's a 24-second shot clock in the NBA or how many men are allowed on the court at once again? or wait is our team the one in the white or the one in the red? They're mistakes that make you wonder if he's in the process of having an existential crisis or a mini-stroke or both, and they always come at times of the game where we need his stoutness the most. Plenty of guys need to be taken off the floor in fourth-quarter situations due to matchup or shooting reasons; Danny Green might be the first player in NBA history who routinely merits a late-game sub because his brain is on fire. (It's actually a great argument for putting the game away early, like the Sixers did against Indiana last night, to get Danny out before the fourth and neutralize the potential for his eventual trapdoor plays.)
Again: This is supposed to be our championship experience guy. Danny Green won three titles with three different teams, playing for some of the smartest coaches and solidest franchises in the Association. He's started on the wing aside LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard. He's never once missed the playoffs. This is the guy you're supposed to most want in the foxhole with you -- and generally, he is. But twice or three times a night, he jumps out of the foxhole, and starts dancing bachata while yelling to the enemy, "HEY WOOHOO FOXHOLE OVER HERE!!" And you just stare at him, too stunned to even be angry, unable to muster up any words in response to his 60-to-0 judgment lapses beyond, Danny.......... why? (And given the level at which he's won over the course of his career, Danny......... HOW?)
And the really funny thing is: both Danny and Seth have still been better than I expected for Philly this year! I thought for sure we were signing up for the worst shooting season of Danny Green's career, but I'll gladly take 40% from the field and 38% from him -- he's hit some pretty big ones for us already -- and when he's locked in on defense, he really helps raise this team's defensive ceiling. Meanwhile, though Seth Curry isn't the flamethrower from deep that I anticipated him being, I have been more impressed than I expected with him as a scorer, as a secondary playmaker and especially as a defender, where he's undersized and imperfect, but really attacked some matchups and ended up a difference-maker, not the liability I feared. Both guys are good players who I'm happy to have on the team, and whose absence would be highly impactful if either were to be traded or miss extended time.
Really, all of it just adds up to prove that whether drafted, signed in free agency or traded for, no perimeter acquisitions for the Sixers are ever allowed to be normal. We simply can't have guards of the ho-hum, make some-miss some, hold their own on one side and not totally kill you on the other variety of this team. We only get the ones who suffer amnesia as soon as they walk in the door, who go hmmm that's odd the ball didn't *used* to look that flat coming out of my hands when they take their first shot in the red, white and blue, who ultimately prove contradictory and paradoxical in their very nature as player types. I don't know which one is having a wilder season between Seth and Danny, but I do know that only the Sixers could possibly have both at once.