In an NBA Finals series full of superstars, headlined by masterful teammate Luka Doncic, Australian duo Josh Green and Dante Exum won’t be getting that much attention.
Doncic has been the one constant amid a revolving door of role players and co-stars in Dallas over the past few years, and while the Slovenian sensation is still more than capable of being a one-man wrecking crew, this season the Mavericks finally put the right pieces around him.
Obviously that starts with Kyrie Irving and then extends to the drafting of rookie big man Dereck Lively Jr. and addition of trade deadline targets P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford.
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Even forward Derrick Jones Jr., who signed a one-year veteran minimum last offseason, has averaged 9.8 points in the postseason to become a free agency bargain given his calling card is the work he does on the other end of the floor.
But at various points during the regular season and even in the playoffs, Exum and especially Green have emerged as key role players in what could be a championship-winning team.
For both Exum and Green though, even making it to the NBA Finals in the first place is an achievement in itself given the position both players found themselves in at the end of 2022.
Green, a 2020 first-round pick, had seen his playing time significantly reduced as the Sydney native averaged just 7.6 minutes per game in Dallas’ 2022 playoff run, which ended with a Conference Finals exit at the hands of Golden State.
Exum, meanwhile, was in the middle of his second season abroad, playing in Europe for Partizan Belgrade, wondering if he — a former fifth overall pick — would ever get another shot in the NBA.
Both Exum and Green were at a crossroads of sorts in their careers, still with so much left to give but not sure where the next chapter would take them.
It ended up reuniting the Boomers teammates, pairing Green with the same player he used to look up to when he was only 17 years old and honing his craft at Florida’s IMG Academy.
But things could have been very different for Green if he had not put in the work during a “big summer” after the 2022 playoffs, sparking an “incredible” two-month transformation.
THE ‘BIG SUMMER’ BEHIND GREEN’S BUMPER MAVS PAYDAY
Not even 24 hours had passed since Dallas had been eliminated by Golden State before Green reached out to veteran trainer Joe Abunassar, founder of Impact Basketball and a pioneer in player development.
“I love players like Josh that are really kind of at the crossroads of their career and really need to grow up into the game,” Abunassar told foxsports.com.au last year.
“To make themselves a name in the league.”
Abunassar said at the time that the program had put “about” 300 players into the NBA over the past 25 years, including former stars like Garnett and Chauncey Billups and more recent ones such as Tyrese Haliburton and Ziaire Williams.
Although, it is not a case of Abunassar taking any player he can get. He is selective about who he works with, at a point in his career where he doesn’t “like to work with a lot of guys that I don’t enjoy working with”, as he put it in 2023.
Which brings us back to Green, because even from the first time Abunassar met Green — at that point just a 19-year-old draft hopeful — there were already signs of “something special”.
Green just needed to refine a few things. That required putting in the extra hours, which was no problem for Green, who Abunassar said “worked his arse off” even in his teenage days.
Green needed that same work ethic after a disappointing post-season, which he told foxsports.com.au in late 2022 had “helped me become motivated and ready to go”.
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“He did not have a great playoffs run in the sense that he lost his minutes and so many players when that happens, they point the finger,” Abunassar said.
“But what Josh did is he called me the day after or maybe the night of and said, ‘I’ve got to get better’. He said, ‘I have to have a big summer. I have to get better’.
“And of course, somebody like myself, who sometimes fights with players to understand that, was extremely pleased to hear that. It spoke to his focus.”
The result was that Green moved to Las Vegas about a week after the postseason ended, working with Abunassar for two months on his shooting, ball-handling and finishing.
Those were three key areas of improvement Dallas wanted to see in Green and it was particularly important that the Mavericks saw it from him the following season too given he would be rookie extension eligible in the summer of 2023.
All that work Green put in that summer with Abunassar ended up paying off in a big way, with the Australian agreeing to a three-year, $41 million ($A61.5m) extension with Dallas.
Green’s emergence as a willing and confident shooter helped open up his game, only adding to the 23-year-old’s value for Dallas off the bench as the ultimate glue guy with quick hands and high energy that make him disruptive on the defensive end.
In fact, former Celtics champion Kevin Garnett put Green’s name forward as one of the secret weapons Boston has to look out for in the upcoming Finals series.
“He’s the [Lu] Dort of Dallas,” Garnett said on the latest episode of the ‘KG Certified’ podcast.
“You see how Dort played Luka… he was in his arse making him fall. He really beat Luka up that series. That’s what Green is going to do… he competes, he will run your arse over. “Australians should wake up looking for the smoke, he plays D like a stronger Caldwell-Pope… he’s got fight in him.”
Most recently, Green had a pair of steals and showed off his improvement as a passer with slick playmaking to set up Washington in Dallas’ Game 5 blowout win over Minnesota.
Green had an injury-disrupted start to this season before an impressive stretch in February, where he averaged 11.7 points and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 46.8 per cent from downtown.
When Green was out of line-up Exum was often the one to benefit from the additional playing time, although the 28-year-old guard also had his own injury setbacks this season.
HOW LUCKLESS EXUM TOOK A ‘RISK’ AND WAS REWARDED
That, unfortunately, was nothing new for Exum, whose early years in the NBA were plagued by injuries — most notably an ACL tear after his promising rookie season in Utah.
Exum had played all 82 games of his rookie campaign, starting 41 of them, but missed the entire 2015-16 season and then later underwent shoulder surgery in October, 2017.
An ankle sprain, bone bruise and partially torn patellar tendon in his right followed, with Exum suffering all three injuries in the 2018-19 season before being traded by the Jazz.
“I didn’t think it was gonna happen that fast. But I was happy, relieved, and just ready for that next chapter,” Exum told Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports earlier this year.
“I needed a fresh start. I think it was just something I needed for my mental [health], just to get back to playing basketball.”
But that didn’t happen at Cleveland, with Exum playing just 24 games in his first season with the Cavaliers and only six in his second year before being traded to the Houston Rockets.
There, Exum didn’t see any playing time and was waived in late 2021, seven years after he was first drafted into the league at fifth overall.
It left him at risk of simply fading into the background, becoming just another top prospect that promised so much but amounted to so little, through no fault of his own, of course.
But instead of asking what could have been, Exum asked himself what could still be.
He made the decision to move to Europe, first with FC Barcelona and then Partizan, finding the best shooting touch of his career and simply getting back to enjoying basketball again.
Finally, after giving so much of himself to the sport for so many years, it was starting to give a little back. Although nothing else was guaranteed.
“It’s always a risk,” Exum told Yahoo Sports.
“Not many people go to Europe and are able to come back. It’s hard to get back.”
But the Mavericks came calling, impressed by Exum’s development in Europe after the Australian averaged 13.2 points for Partizan in his final season in Europe.
“The expectations were off the charts for him when he was drafted at 18,” Dallas coach Jason Kidd said, “but sometimes it just takes people a little bit longer”.
In the case of Exum, there was little he could do to speed up that journey, the victim of a career that to most people would be viewed as one of misfortune. But Exum sees it differently.
Because without that adversity and the time spent in Europe, which Exum described as a “different beast”, he would not be the same person or player he is today.
And while Exum has gradually seen his minutes reduced this postseason, it does not take away from the impact he had at Dallas in various stages of the regular season, at one point rewarded with a starting role before an injury again derailed the momentum he had built.
“Honestly, he’s been amazing so far,” Doncic said of Exum after he had 19 points and five assists in a 132-122 win over the Warriors.
“I know we’re looking for a buzzword or something different in the world, but he’s a basketball player — playing his role and being a star in his role,” added coach Kidd at the time.
“It’s a pretty cool thing because he’s not a max player. But he’s playing like a max player.
“It’s a beautiful thing to watch. He deserves everything he’s getting right now.”
Both Exum and Green have put in the work to get to this point, four wins away from becoming NBA champions.
They have taken different roads — Exum’s a long and winding one, while Green himself has had to overcome a few speedbumps along the way.
But it will only make the moment they lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy that much more special and while the focus will be on Doncic and Irving if that does happen, both Exum and Green will know — regular season or postseason — they played a part in making NBA history.