MEXICO CITY – Basketball has taken former Boston Celtics wing Javonte Green far from the state of Massachusetts since he last suited up for the team in 2021. The Chicago Bulls, a pit stop in the G League, back to the Bulls, then the New Orleans Pelicans and Cleveland Cavaliers before landing with his current club, the Detroit Pistons, this season.
That last team, the Pistons, took part in this year’s NBA Mexico Game, which featured Detroit and the Dallas Mavericks, the former winning 122-110. Ahead of it, the Celtics Wire caught up with the Radford alum, who told us about how he remains close to injured Celtics star Jayson Tatum. Green also shared his thoughts on his visit to the Mexican capital with Detroit, which, it turns out, is not his first. “This is my second time,” he explained.
“My second time I was with the Santa Cruz Warriors (the G League team for the Golden State Warriors),” Green added, referring to when he played the local G League squad, the Capitanes, in that post-Bulls stint. “That’s the year they had Juan Toscano-Anderson.”
Both his Pistons and the Mavs had just completed an open practice, and everyone looked like they were feeling the city’s elevation, which is at 2,240 meters, or 7,350 feet, over 2000 feet higher than the NBA city with the highest elevation, Denver, Colorado at 5,280 feet. “The last time I played here, it was kind of tough,” said the Virginia native. “They have to go through the same thing we have to go through, so, it’ll be okay.”
Turns out, Green was right about Detroit, who won with a late push in the fourth. Even though he played a bigger role with his G League squad, the Capitanes got the win in their first of two tilts that season. And we suspect that elevation may have played a role.
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