On New-Look Celtics, a New Opportunity for Jeff Green There are few N.B.A. players for whom the term emotional roller coaster has more meaning than it does for Boston Celtics forward Jeff Green. Today Green is busy preparing for the N.B.A. season. He is likely to have a significant role next season as one of the first players off the bench for a Celtics team with a new, younger look. It's a far cry from where Green was on Dec. 17. Just eight days ahead of the team's Christmas Day opener against the Knicks and a week after signing a one-year, $9 million deal, Green learned, through a routine physical, that he had an aortic aneurysm, a heart condition serious enough to require season-ending surgery. Contract voided and N.B.A. future in jeopardy, Green found himself miles removed from what looked to be a promising career. On draft day in 2007, the Seattle SuperSonics selected Kevin Durant with the second pick, then traded Ray Allen and Glen Davis to Boston for the Celtics' pick at No. 5 -- Green -- Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West. Durant and Green were seen as saviors for a franchise whose future - both in the standings and where it called home - was in doubt. After a rancorous legal battle, the owner Clay Bennett moved the team from Seattle to Oklahoma City ahead of the 2008-9 regular season. With a core of Durant, Green and the 2008 draft pick Russell Westbrook, the young Thunder struggled out of the gate, winning 3 of their first 32 games. But they won 20 of their remaining 50, serving notice that the organization's emphasis on homegrown talent could pay dividends. The next season, the Thunder won 50 games, making the playoffs for the first time in their new city and giving the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers all they could handle in Round 1. In 2011, the 55-win Thunder made it all the way to the conference finals before succumbing to the Dallas Mavericks. By this time, two more neophytes - the 2009 lottery pick James Harden and Serge Ibaka, taken by the Sonics in 2008 and stashed away in Europe for a season - had joined Durant and Westbrook at the fore of what was fast becoming the league's most exciting young squad. But Green was no longer part of that equation. He and Nenad Krstic were traded to the Celtics in February 2011 for center Kendrick Perkins and guard Nate Robinson. At the time, the trade was seen as a bad bargain for the Celtics, for whom Perkins had served as the defensive anchor on a team fresh off two N.B.A. finals appearances in three seasons. Green, meanwhile, had seen his productivity - and confidence - slip in the wake of Durant and Westbrook's ascendancies. His woes continued down the 2011 stretch, when he averaged 9.8 points and 3.3 rebounds in just under 24 minutes a game, mostly off the bench. Whether because of unfamiliar surroundings; a new level of media scrutiny; or the demands of Doc Rivers, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and the rest of the battle-tested Celtics, Green's struggles had many people wondering whether he had hit his ceiling. On Aug. 22 of this year, the Celtics announced that they had signed Green - now recovered and medically cleared - to a four-year, $36 million contract. Criticism quickly followed. Jeff Green got 4 years/$36 million? ............ 4 YEARS, 36 MILLION?" one Celtics fan tweeted. "Lakers get Nash for nothing, Jeff Green gets $36 million, Nets trade for Joe Johnson #mostnbasummerever," wrote another. But lost in all the hand-wringing has been the fact that such talent gambles have long been a hallmark of the Celtics - and in many cases, they've worked. Consider Nate Archibald. The only player to lead the league in both scoring and assists, he was widely thought to be washed up in 1977. Enter the Celtics, who nabbed Archibald (along with Marvin Barnes and the pick that would eventually become Danny Ainge) in a trade that sent Kermit Washington, Sidney Wicks, Kevin Kunnert and Freeman Williams to the San Diego Clippers. Archibald eventually helped lead the Celtics - along with Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Cedric Maxwell - to the 1981 title. Exhibit B: Bill Walton. Once a transcendent N.B.A. talent, Walton had, by 1985, seen his career derailed by persistent foot injuries. After being dealt by the Clippers to the Celtics in exchange for Maxwell, Walton blossomed as the league's sixth man of the year, helping Boston secure its 16th banner, in 1986. Clearly, Green has a long way to go before being mentioned in the same breath as a pair of Hall of Famers. But his versatility and intelligence - Georgetown Coach John Thompson III once called Green the smartest player he had ever coached - makes him precisely the kind of reclamation project Boston has made work in the past.