Beleaguered Nets Sign Jamal Crawford for Rest of Season In Effort to Bolster Rotation
It’s been a rough week for the Brooklyn Nets, who, like 21 other teams, are either en route to or have arrived in Orlando in preparation for the NBA’s restart later this month at the Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World. The Nets have been ravaged by injuries and players testing positive for the coronavirus as they headed to the Sunshine State with just 12 healthy players. Making things even worse is that the top players on the team, including Kevin Durant, who hasn’t played all season, aren’t among that group, which is going to challenge the Nets to be competitive once things restart.
Just this week alone, Brooklyn lost both Spencer Dinwiddie and Taurean Prince after they tested positive for COVID-19. Deandre Jordan opted out after testing positive last month and Wilson Chandler pulled out in the best interests of his own health along with his family’s. Kyrie Irving suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery in February and won’t be in Orlando. Neither will Nic Claxton, who recently had surgery and is out of action as well. Now, it’s a matter of looking at who the Nets can bring in to fill some of those open roster spots in an effort to compete.
The Nets already signed Justin Anderson to a deal to fill Chandler’s roster spot for the rest of the season. He played three games for Brooklyn this season totaling 17 minutes. In that short stint, Anderson was one of six from the floor, zero of three from beyond the arc and one of two at the charity stripe. Over the course of 219 regular season games, of which he’s started 23, he averaged 5.3 points, 2.5 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game. Anderson is a career 41.8 percent shooter from the floor, including 30 percent from beyond the arc, and 77.6 percent from the charity stripe.
On Thursday, the Nets have added a player with a longer track record and who is a proven commodity to potentially inject some offense into their battered rotation. According to sources, Brooklyn inked 40-year-old Jamal Crawford to a deal for the rest of the season. Crawford didn’t play in the league this season with his last game coming with the Suns on April 9, 2019 against the Mavericks. In that contest, he hit 18 of 30 from the floor, including seven of 13 from three-point range, and knocked down eight of nine free throws en route to a season-high 51 points at the age of 39. He had been working out at home but had resisted the call to make one final run until signing with the Nets.
Crawford is battle-tested and a guy that presents veteran leadership along with experience to the shredded Nets organization at this stage. He has logged 1,326 regular season games, starting 433 of them, in his 19-year career that spans eight different teams: the Nets will mark his ninth stop. His shooting can be streaky as he is a career 41 percent shooter from the floor, including 34.8 percent from three-point range, and 86.2 percent at the free throw line. Crawford has averaged 14.6 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game in his career with a career-high mark of 20.6 ppg coming with the Knicks back in the 2007-08 campaign. He averaged double-digit points per game every season between the 2002-03 campaign and the 2017-18 campaign before taking a lesser bench role with the Suns in 2018-19.
Crawford has taken part in 74 postseason games, starting one, and put up an average of 14.3 points, 1.9 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game in those contests. He shot 38.6 percent from the floor, including 30.7 percent from beyond the arc, and 86.5 percent from the free throw line in the playoffs. Crawford is a three-time Sixth Man of the Year Award winner. He stands fourth among active players with 2,220 three-point field goals and is eighth all-time while he is first among active players (and third all-time) with 6,377 three-point field goal attempts. If Crawford hasn’t been tested regularly since June 23, he’ll have to quarantine and be tested every day for a week in Orlando before being allowed to hit the floor.
The Nets still have a pair of roster spots that they will look to fill in order to help the team rebuild and reload. If nothing else, the addition of Crawford is a boost for Brooklyn as he has proven himself to be a viable contributor for nearly two decades. Given the issues that have ravaged the Nets, he could well be the floor leader that the team requires with so many missing pieces in their rotation.
