How Josh Green performed in Australia's loss to Canada

A poor performance from the Charlotte Hornets guard underlined Australia's second half mishap

Josh Green - Australia Olympics / FIBA Basketball

Coming off of a win against a shallow Greece team, Australia managed to keep the momentum rolling with a fast start against the favored Canadians. However, they ultimately ran out of steam.
After securing a narrow 49-45 lead at the half, the Australian's offense faltered, producing a measly 34 total points after the break.

Perfectly encapsulating the team's lack of production was the Charlotte Hornets' very own, Josh Green, who was spared from having a Tony Snell-like stat sheet by a lone assist.

Seeing just over 10.5 minutes of playing time in the first half, Green was mostly limited to standing in the corner on offense, seldomly touching the ball while also swarming to the basket in an attempt to provide an extra body in the paint for rebounds. Thankfully, he was still able to display a relatively high motor on defense. Consistently hustling back down the court and not allowing any chaos to happen in transition, Green played that aspect of his role incredibly well.

His best moment of the game came at the 3:54 mark in the second, when he managed to hand the ball off to Patty Mills prior to setting a solid screen. With Mills drawing the foul immediately afterwards, this proved to be Green's seldom opportunity to contribute some points to the offense. As a result, he entered the locker room having played a total of 10 minutes and 32 seconds, with no shot attempts and empty stat sheet.

Way to start the #Olympics! 💯

Canada 🇨🇦 keep their perfect record intact against Australia 🇦🇺, and grab a huge advantage for quarter-finals 🔥#Paris2024 x #Basketball pic.twitter.com/z9RvfgQ3fP

— FIBA (@FIBA) July 30, 2024

After the break, the monotony continued, with Green more or less doing exactly what he did in the first half. As the third quarter drew to a close, he had still yet to see a shot attempt in the contest, as he had built upon nothing but his personal foul count.

Finally, after an incredibly quiet game, Green would get his chance with the ball in the fourth. Unfortunately, for both him and the Australian's, he came up short twice. After missing his lone three point attempt, Green would see one last chance to score, this time inside the paint. However, a scuffed attempt on the close-range shot proved to be his final effort of the day.

With a +/- of -4 in addition to committing four personal fouls throughout the contest, this was an incredibly uninspiring performance.

Player Grade for Josh Green: F+

0 pts (0/2 FG, 0/1 3pt) 1 assist

Given the ongoing debate surrounding Australia's decision to utilize Green instead of Matisse Thybulle or Matthew Dellavedova, today's performance in the group stage is likely to fan the flames of that argument. The less-than-stellar17 minute and 22 second outing won't inspire much optimism in Charlotte. However, it did confirm that the Hornets have secured themselves a solid, young defender, who still has plenty of time left to make improvements upon his game.

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