Hoopsworld: Green Learning One Day At A Time

Hoopsworld.com - Taurean Green learned some valuable lessons about basketball growing up in Boca Raton, Florida and hasn’t forgotten them to this day. That’s what happens when your old man played ten years in the league and doesn’t believe in mailing it in against his own kid.

“He used to beat me playing when I was little,” Green said about his dad Sidney, who was a 6′9 journeyman with the Bulls, Pistons, Knicks, Magic, Spurs and Hornets. “I didn’t beat him until the seventh grade and after that he said, ‘I’m not playing you one-on-one anymore.’”

Long before he won two NCAA titles at the University of Florida and long before he became the promising rookie point guard for the Portland Trail Blazers, the 20-year-old Green listened intently as his dad talked about the long and unforgiving road to the NBA.

“He’s basically taught me to observe the game and learn,” Green told HOOPSWORLD.

“I always listen to the advice he gives me. I may not like it sometimes, but I’m always going to listen to it. My dad’s been a great teacher and taught me the mindset that I have to have. I’m just trying to make a name for myself.”

With Portland’s preseason coming to a close, Green has certainly made himself known and is steadily climbing up the Blazers depth chart. Projected as a fourth option at the point behind Jarrett Jack, Steve Blake and Sergio Rodriguez, Green is letting his aggressive play speak for himself and Nate McMillan is all ears.

It’s been that way since mid-June for McMillan. That’s when Green worked out for the Blazers along with Oregon’s Aaron Brooks and South Carolina’s Tre Kelly; the Blazers head coach remembers being enamored by Green’s “good decisions” and “demeanor.”

“I felt like I would like for him to run my team. I recall asking Kevin (Pritchard) and one of our assistant coaches, ‘out of those three guards who would you follow? They both said Green, ‘I would follow Green’.”

Not long after, the Blazers made two Greens happy on draft night.

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