New Toronto Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard's injury problems and issues with the San Antonio Spurs training staff are well-documented, but teammate Danny Green revealed on his podcast on Tuesday that he, too, dealt with a prolonged injury last season.

On the first episode of Inside the Green Room with Danny Green, the 31-year-old guard's show with Harrison Sanford, the UNC product disclosed that his end-of-season physical disclosed a groin tear.

Green, traded to the Raptors last week as part of the Leonard deal that saw DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a protected 2019 first-round pick go the other way, appeared in 70 games this past season, despite dealing with a number of injuries.

"December came around and we played Boston," Green said. Kyrie [Irving] was still playing at this point, he’s not hurt. They’re doing really well, actually, early in the season. We actually won the game, but I strained my groin in the first half, in the first or second quarter. I was trying to chase down and block a dunk, which was stupid because I was nowhere near close to getting the block, but that’s just the competitive nature in me."

After an MRI revealed the strain, Green says the rehab process didn't bring him back to full health.

"With a groin strain, it’s hard to tell between a groin [injury] and a sports hernia, sometimes," Green said. "After some time to heal, I try to play again and certain days, I’d have bad days and some days, it would be good. And I’d feel it and it’d be like ‘Maybe you should get it checked’ and my agent [said], ‘Maybe you should get a second opinion.’ I didn’t want to because I had full faith and belief in the Spurs staff. They’ve always been great to me. They’ve always done right by me. They’ve always done a helluva job."

Green said that while staff continued to look at his injury over the course of the season, seeking out a second opinion, like Leonard did for his quadriceps injury that kept him to just nine games last season, might have been a better course of action.

"Throughout the season, we monitored [the strain], but we never went back to check on it again because so many other injuries had happened," Green said. "I should have gotten a second opinion, so I can see where Kawhi had come from when he got his second opinion. A lot of times, you’ll get information from outside sources. I’m not saying that the Spurs staff isn’t up to par, it’s just that not everybody is a specialist in every area. So it’s not like they’re specialists in the groin area or with sports hernia. To go to a guy, who may be in Philly, to get a second opinion shouldn’t hurt."

It was only after the team had lost a five-game, first-round Western Conference playoff series to the eventual NBA champion Golden State Warriors that Green learned that the ailment was more than a strain.

"At the end of the season, I had to get another MRI – you get your exit physical – and the strain was still there and now a full tear," Green said. "Since then, I’ve been rehabbing it, basically, and now they’re passing that information on to Toronto. But we don’t know how long I’d been playing with the strain or [when] the tear had happened because we didn’t really circle back or focus on it with some of the other injuries that happened throughout the season whether it was the Achilles, dislocated finger, I had stitches in my face or wherever it may be. A second opinion could have helped."

While Green insists that the Spurs staff was anything but negligent, he acknowledges that the fact that Leonard sought an outside look for his injury shouldn't have been criticized.

"[The Spurs staff] did a great job," Green said. "They did everything they could, but I think it would have been nice to see a specialist just to see another angle, another view. So just because Kawhi got a second opinion, you can’t knock him for that. Everybody should get a second opinion just to see another perspective."

Green says that the pressure he put on himself to perform didn't allow him to take the time off that, in retrospect, was needed.

"You could tell that my play deteriorated towards the end of the season," Green said. "It wasn’t the same, but because of my competitive nature, I didn’t want to leave the floor. I wanted to continue to play regardless and I felt that pressure that we needed to win. We needed everybody and I felt like if I wasn’t playing, we didn’t have much of a shot. With Kawhi not playing, we had even less of a shot. We were missing out on a couple of other starters and I wanted to show that I could help, but I probably should have sat out, waited and took some time or done another reevaluation and got a second opinion."

Now heading into his 10th NBA season, Green says he's taking inspiration from a former teammate he played with in his rookie season in Cleveland as he's working his way back to game-shape.

"Hopefully, I’ll come back to 100 per-cent health and stay 100 per cent healthy," Green said. "When you get older, it’s hard to sustain it. That’s the key. Obviously, LeBron [James] in Year 15 is killing it. Eighty-two games is hard to do. Most young guys don’t play 82 games."