Taurean Green Is Back Home And On A Mission

Taurean Green

By FRANZ BEARD

GatorBaitMedia.com

In the Florida locker room, about 30 minutes after Joakim Noah had shown off his dance moves for the whole world to see following the Gators’ crushing 77-56 win over Arkansas to win the 2007 SEC Tournament at the Georgia Dome, The Imp decided Florida’s charismatic star had sucked just about enough oxygen out of the room.

“Jo can’t dance,” Taurean Green announced. Taurean was seated in front of a locker a few steps from Noah, who was holding court to a throng of media types intent on getting the story about the postgame dance that left Verne Lundquist speechless. “He thinks he can dance, but he can’t dance. I’m a lot better dancer than Jo. He doesn’t win all the arguments – I win most of them – and he definitely can’t dance.”

Noticing that the few reporters around him were laughing, it was time to take things to a new and different level. He grinned. It was the kind of grin that told you to buckle your seat belt because something big was about to happen.

Taurean got to his feet, took a few steps to his right where he parted the media folks surrounding Noah. Noah was in mid-sentence talking about getting his grandfather in Cameroon to offer up a sacrifice – a chicken perhaps? – when Taurean tapped on his shoulder. The look on Noah’s face said it all. He was irritated, disturbed because he had the folks in the media eating out of his hand. When Jo got on a roll in those days, he had everybody’s undivided attention.

And now he was interrupted, not by a coach or SID Fred Demarest, but Taurean, who had a way of getting to him like no one else. There was a perturbed look on Joakim Noah’s face. They made eye contact and locked onto each other, Noah frowning, Green smiling. It was the exact moment The Imp had been waiting for.

“Jo, you can’t dance,” Taurean announced. This wasn’t just a sharp needle. It was a 7-inch hatpin designed to burst the rather sizeable Noah bubble and provoke a retort.

It worked just as Taurean had planned it out in his mind.

“I can dance! Yes, I can dance!” Noah shot back. “What a hater! You’re a hater!”

Victory! Mission accomplished!

Rather than antagonize Noah some more, Green showed mercy at the exact moment he could have completely deflated his teammate. A lifeline was offered.

“You can sing Jo, but you can’t dance,” Green offered. Noah, figuring it’s best to grab for anything positive he could at this point, grabbed hold of the lifeline rather than sink to the bottom.

Noah replied, “I can sing. I really can sing” to which Green replied, “But you can’t dance! You really can’t dance!”

Noah grinned. This, obviously, wasn’t the first time Taurean Green had gotten the best of him, but upon seeing his buddy/teammate/brother by a different mother laughing, Noah could only shake his head.

Little did we know that we were getting the first taste of Taurean Green, the coach. Coaches are leaders and this was a leadership moment. Noah was always great copy, but it was Green’s job as the point guard and team leader, to keep everyone grounded and understanding that when it was all said and done, it was all about the team.

Not any individual. That is what made this Florida basketball team so remarkable. It was never about any one individual, but always about the team.

Three weeks later in the same Georgia Dome where the Gators won the SEC Tournament, the Gators won their second straight NCAA championship, becoming the first team since Duke 1991-92 to go back-to-back. It’s such a rare feat that nobody has done it since.

When we think back to that magnificent team Billy Donovan put together we remember Noah for his charisma and defense, Al Horford for his steadiness and toughness, Corey Brewer for his defense and soaring dunks, Lee Humphrey for his long distance bombs and The Imp, Taurean Green, for being the glue that held it all together. In the two national championship seasons, Noah, Horford, Brewer and Humphrey missed games with injuries. Taurean Green never missed a game.

He was tough. He had to be. Billy Donovan, an All-American point guard during his playing days at Providence, rode his point guards hard and he probably rode Taurean harder than any point guard he coached in his 19 years at UF. None of the other point guards wear a national championship ring. Taurean has two.

Not bad for a kid who was not even the second choice to be the point guard for the 2004 recruiting class. The top two choices were Jordan Farmar, who wound up at UCLA, and Darius Washington, the hotshot from Orlando Edgewater who went to Memphis. Taurean was the third choice but it turned out to be the best choice. Farmar and UCLA got to the NCAA championship game in 2006 where Taurean had eight assists on a night that Joakim Noah sucked all the oxygen out of the RCA Dome to win the MVP of the tournament. Darius Washington’s Memphis team never made it to a Final Four because they were chewed up and spit out by Farmar and UCLA. The next year, the Gators were the No. 1 team to start the season and they finished No. 1 after disposing of Ohio State in the championship, a game in which Taurean hit all three of his 3-pointers, all five of his free throws, good for 16 points with six assists.

Three years at Florida. Two national championship rings. 68 wins and 11 losses in those two championship seasons. 1,174 points. 38.9 percent from the 3-point line. 85.7 percent from the foul line. 400 assists. 124 steals. Lasting friendships with Horford, Noah, Brewer, Humphrey and the others who were on those championship teams. Riding around Gainesville, the five of them in Humphrey’s little truck. The “Food Fight of the Century,” so intense, so fun and yet so nasty that Noah’s mother, sister and aunt kicked Taurean, Brewer, Horford and Noah out of their dorm suite for days while they all but needed HazMat suits to clean it up and make it inhabitable again. A forever bond with Donovan. A degree from the University of Florida. Two seasons in the NBA after being drafted in the second round by the Portland Trail Blazers. Eleven years in European pro leagues where he played in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Israel and Poland.

Enough memories to last a lifetime and yet there are more to be made. Playing days behind him after winning a championship in the Polish pro league, it is time for Taurean Green to fulfil the answer he always gave when asked what he wanted to do when he grew up? Basketball coach.

As the son of a coach – Big Sid (Sidney Green) was a coach after his pro playing days ended – coaching was always in his blood so Taurean could have simply taken the plunge to learn the nuances of coaching on the fly. Rather than that approach, he instead has taken a far more systematic approach by starting from the ground up.

The first step on life’s new journey was the year he spent working on Donovan’s NBA staff with the Chicago Bulls.

“I put the [coaching] bug in his ear four or five years ago when he was at OKC and he didn’t know what was going to happen,” Green says. “He told me to wait. I was in Poland. I was able to win a championship so I felt it was a good time to get out.”

By then Donovan had move from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Bulls. He was sort of Donovan’s handyman. He worked with players on the court. He scouted. He did video work. He learned analytics. He developed relationships.

It was a year of preparation.

“We had 8 o’clock meetings every day, the whole coaching staff,” Green said. “Just being in the room with Coach D and he had a great coaching staff … just being able to learn how coaches think, how they game plan, how they prepare for practice, how you manage the team through a drought or whether they are winning. Just going through the daily process of how to coach a team. I think I learned a lot from players. I learned a lot from DeMar (DeRozan), I learned a lot from Ayo (Dosunmu) even though he’s just a rookie.”

All that got him ready for the next step, which was to join Todd Golden’s staff at the University of Florida. Before Golden took the Florida job back in April, he consulted with Donovan, who said this is a place with the potential to win championships again. Golden took the job and he has added Green, a link to the championship past to help him restore the program to a championship level after seven years when it felt UF basketball was spinning its wheels and not making a whole lot of progress.

Green is Golden’s Director of Player Development. It is a multifaceted job, much like the one he had in Chicago. Getting into college coaching was an important step. Getting back into college coaching in Gainesville, where it all began, made it the obvious next step.

“Everything comes full circle,” Taurean said Wednesday morning, standing in the lobby of Florida’s basketball practice facility. He can find his way around the place with his eyes closed. In the lobby where now there is a bigger than life mural of Donovan are the national championship trophies the Gators won in 2006 and 2007. Take the door on the left side of the lobby and the locker room is on the left. Further down are the strength and training facilities. Across the hall is the practice court. Upstairs are the coaches’ offices.

It just feels like home. Donovan doesn’t coach here anymore but his fingerprints are all over the place. Some coaches shy away from living in a perpetual shadow, particularly as large as the one Donovan casts over the Florida program. After all, Billy took over at Florida after Lon Kruger left while claiming you could never recruit enough good players at UF to win championships. All Billy did was win two national championships, get to the Final Four two other times, win the SEC six times and the SEC Tournament four times.

Golden has embraced living in Donovan’s shadow because it serves as a constant reminder that championships can be won at the University of Florida.

“He (Golden) wanted to be here, he’s excited to be here, he’s appreciative of being here,” Taurean says of the new boss. “He works hard, great energy, you know. It’s just a good vibe around him ... I feel the most important thing is he wants to be here.”

This is where Taurean Green wants to be also. While the game has evolved since the days when he suited up for the Gators, there are certain things that will never change. You still have to score more points than the other guys. You still have to rebound. You still have to play defense.

As a coach, you still have to teach the fundamentals and how to play the game the right way. That is where Taurean believes he can have the biggest impact on Golden’s staff.

“That’s part of my job, player development,” he said. “Just trying to teach these kids what’s important, how to move the right way, how to take care of themselves. Just teaching them. These kids need to be taught. They’re still kids at the end of the day. I look back when I was 16, 17, 18, 19, you just got to remember at the end of the day, they’re still kids, man. Ain’t nobody perfect. They’ll make mistakes. You just got to teach them along the way.”

To the casual observer, that probably sounds easy, but one of the ways the game has evolved and why so much time has to be spent teaching fundamentals – not just the kind you have to have to do well on the court but fundamentals of life – is because a high percentage of today’s players have never been taught how to accept coaching and how to appreciate opportunities.

Additionally, nearly every kid who comes to a high profile basketball program like the University of Florida is convinced he will be playing in the NBA after a year or two, this despite the fact they’ve grown up in AAU programs where there is very little coaching.

“I feel like that’s a problem with today’s basketball,” Green said. “A lot of guys don’t know how to play. A lot of guys on the AAU circuit it’s like, hey, go score. That’s what everybody wants to do. I think guys need to be taught the game. A lot of guys in the NBA don’t know how to play the game, still. I think that’s another thing I learned – teach the game. There’s only one basketball. Everybody can’t score. It’s little details that help a team win. I want to be able to teach that and bring whatever I can to help these guys.”

When he played point guard for Donovan and the Gators, Taurean Green was a basketball version of what baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson labeled himself – the straw that stirs the drink. Whether it was being The Imp with the devilish grin who could bring Joakim Noah’s feet back down to earth or stepping to the foul line in clutch situations – does anyone remember when he missed critical free throws with a game on the line? – or being the guy who could take what Donovan dished out and then transform it into a team-leading performance, Taurean Green was the indispensable Gator. He couldn’t get injured and he couldn’t foul out. There was no backup who could have gotten the job done.

Now, Taurean is back in Gainesville, ready to take all the lessons he has absorbed since he arrived on campus with Noah, Horford and Brewer back in the summer of 2004 to pass on to a new generation of Gators. You don’t have to ask the question to know that this is just the role he’s been preparing himself for.

The smile – that million dollar smile that has always been his calling card – tells you everything you need to know.