team he’s played for since he was drafted in 2007, two shy of the record shared by Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg and Joe Smith.
During the regular season, he played some of the best basketball of his career, posting a career high in offensive efficiency, while starting for more than half the season filling in for the All-Stars Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving.
Because of a plantar fascia strain in his left foot, Green missed six straight playoff games before returning on Sunday for Game 4 of the Nets’ second-round series against Milwaukee, a Nets loss that left the best-of-seven series tied at two games apiece.
His last five contracts — with the Nets, Houston Rockets, Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers — were for one year or less, at the minimum rate.
Green has routinely averaged around double digits in scoring and outperformed the expectations for someone with his pay.
But instead of landing him a substantial contract, that performance, after a strong regular season, only led to another minimum contract — the kind of status often reserved for players who are on the fringe of the N.B.A.
“It confuses me, but it isn’t frustrating,” Green said in a recent interview.
“I’d love to settle down in one place,” Green said.
After he agreed to yet another minimum deal, with the Jazz in 2019, Dwyane Wade said in a viral Twitter post: “I do NOT understand how and why Jeff Green keep signing these 1 year deals for the minimum.
He was drafted fifth overall by the Boston Celtics and immediately traded to the Seattle SuperSonics in a package for Ray Allen.
At his best, Green has showed a talent for scoring, but not much else — which helps explain why he hasn’t been able to settle with one franchise.
Kevin Ollie, a teammate of Green’s in Oklahoma City after the Seattle franchise moved, said Green’s personality was “bubbly,” but “detail-oriented” on the floor.
Ollie said one of the challenges of playing for so many teams was constantly having to uproot his family, particularly his children.
“The difficult part is when you leave one team and go to another team, you’ve got to pick up all your stuff,” Smith said.
“With Jeff, and kind of like mine, you perform a role which the organization asks you to, and you perform it to the best of your ability.
In January 2012, when he was 25 and playing for the Celtics, he had surgery for an aortic aneurysm that was discovered in a routine physical.
“My goal after the surgery was to go out and play as hard, and have people forget that I even had surgery.
“You can’t take this career, these opportunities for granted,” Green said.