By Davis Showell
On Wednesday, NBA reporter Shams Charania tweeted that the Brooklyn Nets signed veteran guard Jamal Crawford. Crawford, 40, has not played a game since the end of the 2018-2019 season, where he averaged 7.9 PPG in 64 games off the bench for the Phoenix Suns. Since his final game, where he dropped 51 points, Twitter has been filled with old highlight reels and fans clamoring for a Jamal Crawford return this season. While Crawford can still be an extremely fun player to watch and has had a very respectable NBA career, he is no longer suited to play in today’s league.
The main draw of Jamal Crawford’s game is his ability to score the basketball. A career 14.6 PPG scorer, Crawford has been used as an offensive weapon off the bench for the majority of his 18-year career. However, this past season with the Suns, Crawford averaged just 7.9 points in 18.9 minutes, his lowest points per minute output since his rookie season. Crawford also took slightly more shots per minute (2.51) last season than he has during his career (2.43 career average) while also seeing a decrease in scoring. All of this also came with the lowest usage rate since Crawford was a rookie. Crawford got fewer opportunities, yet took more shots and scored less than he has during his career up to that point, which shows an alarming decline in efficiency.
Crawford’s playstyle has also gone out of style in the NBA. His flashy handles usually lead to pull-up jumpers, and the mid-range game has fallen out of favor in modern basketball due to its lack of efficiency compared to all other shots on the floor. Figure 1 (below) shows the percentage of shots Crawford takes from mid-range (16 feet to the 3-point line) compared to the NBA average every season since Crawford was drafted in 2000:
Crawford’s decline has also lessened his ability to get shots in the paint, another important aspect of an effective and efficient wing scorer. Figure 2 (below) show the percentage of shots Crawford takes from 0-10 feet compared to the NBA average:
While you would expect Crawford’s percentage to be lower than the league average (where centers like DeAndre Jordan are factored in), the clear decline in shots in the paint towards the latter stages of Crawford’s career is worrisome. However, this would not be as much of an issue if his shooting percentages from the outside went up. Unfortunately for Crawford, they have not. Crawford has been a consistently average 3-point shooter his entire career, and slightly below average inside the arc. While the league has seen a slight uptick in 2-point percentage (likely due to less mid-range shots), Crawford has failed to acclimate to the changing game. Graphs of Crawford’s shooting percentages from 2 and 3 compared to the league averages can be seen in Figure 3 (below):
In addition to his offensive woes, Crawford’s atrocious defense has been a huge hindrance to his production. According to ESPN’s real plus-minus, Crawford ranked as the fifth-worst defender out of 514 (!) eligible players in the 2018-2019 season with a -3.93 defensive real plus-minus. The only players worse was the notoriously bad defender Jordan Clarkson, as well as rookies Trae Young, Colin Sexton, and Kevin Knox . Crawford’s embarrassingly bad defense is the primary reason he was left on the market until now. With wing play growing in emphasis in today’s game, having a massive defensive liability like Crawford is unjustifiable. Paired with his offensive decline and his age, Jamal Crawford has become borderline unplayable.
All of this leads to an important question: why did the Nets sign Crawford in the first place? The answer is likely due to the tough circumstances surrounding the Net’s entry into the Orlando restart and pure convenience. Brooklyn has had Kyrie Irving, Spencer Dinwiddie, and other important role players all opt out of the restart for various reasons. With 19 years of NBA experience, Crawford is an easy plug-and-play option for the Nets who will desperately need guard depth in Orlando. Crawford will use this opportunity to try and convince a team to sign him for the 2020-2021 season, so the move does make some sense for both parties. However, as fun as Jamal Crawford used to be on the court, his days of being a reliable pop off of the bench are over and he no longer has the ability to compete at an NBA level.
Statistics were taken from Basketball Reference and ESPN.