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Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:37 pm
by hands11
hands11 wrote:We talked a lot about Crawford inefficiency over the time he has been here and this last offseason.

So how is he looking so far this year. He basic stats are looking better.

His 3 ball % is up and that is helping to pull up his FG%
He efficiency should look even better when he brings his FT% up to something more normal. He is at .600 when he is a career .808 so I expect he will return to something higher then where he is.

http://espn.go.com/nba/player/stats/_/i ... n-crawford

His SCEFF is up from 1.076 to 1.159
His SHEFF is up from .446 to .511
His AST/TO up from 1.35 to 2.0

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... fjo02.html
Per 36
Rebounding is up from 3.5 to 5.2
AST% is way up from 19.3 to 28.5
PTS are steady at 19
PER up from 14.5 to 17.4

TS% from .448 to .527

Most of us expected he would get more efficient but we debated over how much and where that would rank him. So how is he looking so far in a limited sample size ? From the numbers, he looks more efficient.


Most of us expected he would get more efficient but we debated over how much and where that would rank him. So how is he looking so far in a limited sample size ? From the numbers, he looks more efficient.[/quote]

Year over year numbers after 7 games ( small sample size :wink: )

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... fjo02.html
MP 27.4 to 21.7 down a lot but the last two games he played 35 minutes. But he was injured a few games.

Per 36
Rebounding 3.5 last year to 6.4 - continuing up. Should come back down. Had one 9 rebound game.
FTA 4.2 to 4.5
FT% .793 to .684 - had a bad start but continuing to climb. 11-11 his last 11 attempts. 7-13 before that.
PTS 19.3 last year to 18.7 down a little

Advanced Stats
USG% 28.1 to 27.0 down as little.
AST% is way up from 19.3 to 30.7 - continuing up
DRtg 110 to 105 - defense is improving

FG% .400 to .431 ( still a little low for my liking. I want to see something like .440 to .445 )
3P% .289 to .357 ( huge improvement )
eFG% .446 last year to .508
TS% from .448 to .538 - continuing up
PER up from 14.5 to 17.4 to 16.5 - down a little

I believe my projection for him was that he would mature with his shot selection and improve his 3 pt % which would increase his efficiency. I believed he was a player the team needed to keep for now to see how he progressed. Specially since he has a fearless approach to the game and this team really needs players like that. Craw is a baller. He is the least of their problems right now. Actually, he is one of the few bright spots and is developing nicely.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:45 pm
by hands11
nate33 wrote:I think he ultimately pans out as a journeyman 5th guard, or if he improves a bit more, he might find a niche as a regular-rotation backup SG.

His modest improvement this season is helpful. He might move out of the "detrimental to the team" category and into the "modestly helpful backup scorer" category. He is no where near making himself an indispensable player though. He'll probably never reach a point where he can't be replaced by some other easily-attainable free agent.



What is important is that he has have been with them 1 full ( strike shortened ) season and a part of one his first year. In his second full season with the team, he is improving and if you look at his numbers year over year since he got in the league, they are improving. His defense is getting better.

In a short sample size this year, he seems to be trending the right direction. And I can visible see it to confirm the numbers.

I was never a huge Crawford fan but I did see his value to the team. With his play so far this year, he is slowly making me more and more a fan. But while I had questions about him, I thought he was their best choice for PG until Wall returned.

Given what they had to start this year, I thought they should have put the ball in his hands and let him run the team as the starting PG. He is clearly their most talented guard with Wall out and Beal being a 19 year old rookie.

I think the team made a huge mistake wasting time looking at players like Price and Pargo. They wasted all of preseason on this experiment and it slowed the development of the other players. All they needed to do what start Crawford at PG and let Mack back him up until Livingston became available. What they should have been doing was looking for better options at SG and to do that all they needed to do was resign Mason. Adding Price was stupid. Now they are stuck with him for a year before they cut him. And they wasted time putting the ball in his hands at PG. All they needed to do was this.

Crawford/Mack
Beal/Webster/Mason

Then with Livingston who we could all see was most likely going to became free.

Crawford/Livingston/Mack
Beal/Webster/Mason

Then when Wall returns

Wall/Livingston/Mack
Crawford/Beal/Mason - two good teachers. One about swag and driving. One about spot up shooting.
Trevor A//Webster/Singleton

When your trying to craw out of the gutter, you have to be smart and efficient in your moves. You don't have time to screw around on a player like Price when you have player who have played here that are better. This blunder I put squarely on EG. Moves like this are his responsibility because they are smaller moves that Ted turns to him to decide. So he made two good moves in getting Webster and Livingston but he blow it by adding Price and Pargo into the mix when he didn't need to. And had he not screwed around with those two, it would have been way easier to add Livingston as soon as he was available for game one. And resigning Mason was a no brainer. He wanted to be here. He was even talked about as a future front office person. How do you blow something that simple.

Now, by the time this plays out, we will now have.

Wall/Livingston/Price
Crawford/Beal/Martin/Price
Trevor A//Webster/Singleton

So we have Price and Martin instead of Mason. Not a huge difference in the end, but how things played out game by game with price and the PG battle over preseason has lead to a terrible start to the year. In my view it has been wasted time and loses. Maybe it works out for them in the longer term picture. To do that Martin has to prove to be better then Mason. If so, they would have added a 26 year old 6-1 SG with some handles and kept a 6-7 3 pt shooter who might have a role longer term.

The smarter safer move would have been to keep Mason and use Webster at SG when needed. That is what I called for.

We could have started the year with

Crawford/Livingston/Mack
Beal/Webster/Mason - actually, I might of even started Webster or Mason depending on the preseason.
Trevor A/Singleton//Webster

That turned into

Wall/Livingston/Mack
Crawford/Beal/Mason/Webster
Trevor A//Webster/Singleton

Its the little things that make all the difference.

Once Wall returns and we end up at the follow, they will be fine, but they will have wasted another year getting there.

Wall/Livingston/Price
Crawford/Beal/Martin/Price
Trevor A//Webster/Singleton

Price is going to end up the 3rd PG and the 3rd or 4th SG. Why are they wasting so much time playing him in preseason and to start the year ? Things are going to look better. They did address there back up PG issue and they did add a young SG to replace Nick. They also upgraded at SF. They do have a better roster. This was just a ass backward way to get there.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:49 pm
by hands11
Nivek wrote:
AFM wrote:I'll leave it to Nivek to confirm this statistically, but just from the eye test, Crawford's decision making looks much improved. No more dribbling around for a half hour and then launching a contested fadeaway. I've actually become a fan of his this year


I see very little so far this season to indicate statistically or from just watching to suggest Crawford's decision-making has changed at all. His shooting percentages are about the same, his turnovers are up, his usage rate is about the same, his offensive rating is even worse. His rebounding is MUCH better and his assists are up, but I doubt either number will persist.

More subjectively -- during one of his better shooting games this season, I commented on Twitter that his shot selection seemed the same as it did in previous years (ridiculously long 3s, etc.), but that some of those bad shots were going in. I predicted that those bad shots would stop going in, which is what I think we're seeing.

It's still early in the season, of course, but Crawford looks to me like he's about the same as he's been in previous seasons. Only big differences are rebounds and assists (positive) and turnovers (negative).


When is the last time you saw an eye doctor :wink:

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:57 am
by payitforward
hands11 wrote:
Nivek wrote:
AFM wrote:I'll leave it to Nivek to confirm this statistically, but just from the eye test, Crawford's decision making looks much improved. No more dribbling around for a half hour and then launching a contested fadeaway. I've actually become a fan of his this year


I see very little so far this season to indicate statistically or from just watching to suggest Crawford's decision-making has changed at all. His shooting percentages are about the same, his turnovers are up, his usage rate is about the same, his offensive rating is even worse. His rebounding is MUCH better and his assists are up, but I doubt either number will persist.

More subjectively -- during one of his better shooting games this season, I commented on Twitter that his shot selection seemed the same as it did in previous years (ridiculously long 3s, etc.), but that some of those bad shots were going in. I predicted that those bad shots would stop going in, which is what I think we're seeing.

It's still early in the season, of course, but Crawford looks to me like he's about the same as he's been in previous seasons. Only big differences are rebounds and assists (positive) and turnovers (negative).


When is the last time you saw an eye doctor :wink:

Without any question in his first 7 games, 152 minutes, Jordan Crawford improved -- but back a few days before that, when Nivek posted, that wasn't the case. When you have this small a sample, numbers can change fast.

All the same, it's a good idea to give credit where it's due, not to mention that there is so little opportunity to hand out praise this season that we shouldn't let a genuine opportunity pass us by! So... in the first 7 games as against his whole last year, Crawford's 2pt FG% was up from 45.1% to 48.6%. His 3pt% was up from 28.9% to 35.7%. He was getting to the line a little more, but his FT% was way down. Still, because of his better shooting and increased number of 3pt attempts over 2pt attempts, his TS% was up from 48 to 53% -- that's a big difference.

Crawford's rebounding was also way up -- from 3.8 per 40 minutes to 7.1, which is great. Yet, some of this improvement was nullified by an increase in turnovers and a decrease in steals (both per 40minutes). His assists/40min were also up -- from 4.3 to 6.3.

The result of all this was that after 7 games his WS40 skyrocketed.

Then he played 35 minutes vs. Utah (wch added @ 23% to the sample size!). He went 6-15 on 2pt shots, so that jump in 2pt shooting % is now 1% rather than 3.5%. He got only 1 rebound, so the improvement in rebounding over last year has narrowed. His WS40 went down a point.

His WS40 after 7 games put him in the top 35% of SGs playing 20+ minutes/game. His 8th game brought him back down to average. Of course, average is way way way better than he was last year, when his WS40 was 5th worst in the league among the same group of SGs playing 20+ minutes/game.

Where he'll be after 9 or 10 or 20 or 60 games, no one knows. So far, he's better than he was. We're still 0-8, and he's still not a player who's contributing to our being a good team (average players make you an average team).

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 6, 2012 12:27 am
by hands11
Bump. Merge. We already started that debate here with numbers.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:34 am
by hands11
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... fjo02.html

Number vs last year

MP 27.4 to 25.6

Per 36
TRB 3.5 to 4.8 up decently
FTA 4.2 to 4.5
FT% .793 to .800
PTS 19.3 to 19.9

Advanced Stats
USG% 28.1 to 28.2
AST% 19.3 to 30.8
DRtg 110 to 110

FG% .400 to .417
3P% .289 to .313 down from .357
eFG% .446 to 467 down from .508
TS% from .448 to .512 down from .538
PER up from 14.5 to 17.4 to 16.5 to 17.8

So he is scoring about the same with about the same usage but AST% is way up as he is been playing a little more PG. FG% is up as is his 3 ball, eff and PER.

He has regressed from earlier highs in efficiency but still overall improvement from last year.

Overall, he keep making progress.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 1:21 am
by payitforward
No doubt about it, Jordan Crawford has improved significantly. Right now the only thing that stands out as a negative on offense is his 3pt%. He's shooting @ 31%, which is not very good (tho it is up somewhat from last year). Since he takes more than 6 3pt attempts every 40 minutes -- almost 32% of all his attempts are 3 pointers -- doing better from beyond the arc would be the quickest way to raise his productivity.

To put it another way: Crawford's WS40 is slightly below average for an NBA shooting guard who plays 20+ minutes. Yet he's well *above* average in FTAs, 2pt%, rebounds and assists. It's his 3pt% that's holding him back.

From another angle: his 2pt% is in the top 36%, but his eFG% (figuring in 3pt attempts) is in the bottom 25%.

It's obvious where the biggest room for improvement is!

(Yes, his turnovers are high as well -- but he plays a lot of point guard. That said, they're even high for a point guard.)

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 3:21 am
by tontoz
He just needs to cut out those nonsense deep 3s early in the clock. If he shoots from 3 feet behind the line with 5 seconds left on the clock then i can accept it. But watching him do it early in the clock is nauseating.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:08 pm
by hands11
Well Crawford had a couple rough games against LAL and Miami and has been adjusting to the move to starting PG after he got his first start them like 5 games back but he bounced back really nicely against ATL

Triple double in OT

He started off passing and then picked up the scoring. Just like a PG should do.

44 mins 10-22 and 5-10 from 3 with 11 rebounds 11 assists 1 Turnover and 27 pts

Thats balln

And he played well with Beal who got off to a fast start making all by 1 shot in the first quarter.

I always wanted them to give Crawford a legit shot at bring a PG. His talent seemed to me to be better suited to be a scoring PG then a SG that could pass because I thought the mental approach you are forced to have by being a legit PG would make his shot selection better. He has the handles, passing, can drive and have to swag to lead a team.

Glad the team didn't over react and sign another PG after Price went down. The 3x 2x should buy Crawford some more time to prove he can get it done as the starting PG until Wall returns and if he can, once Wall return, Wall and Crawford at PG would be the best combo of PGs this team has had in a long long time.

The big thing he needs to prove given this opportunity is that he should be the starting PG even when Price returns.

Last night was a great game for him. Hopefully he can show he can get it done again tonight against Orlando. I think he and Beal together could work out helping both become more productive.

If he can develop into that player, then he is a keeper. Back up PG and back up SG who can start at either when needed. That's a valuable piece because it allows you to use extra slots on the other positions.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:25 pm
by nate33
Crawford has settled into his customary role of "decent player on a bad team". On this crappy team, Crawford is our best guard and the only guy capable of creating any offense for himself. That's right in his comfort zone. His efficiency continues to drop though. His TS% is down to .490 and his ORtg is merely 99. To some degree that can be forgiven since there are no good offensive options on the team except Nene.

The bottom line is that I can't really tell whether Crawford has improved much or not. What we really need to know is whether Crawford can produce efficiently when he is playing alongside NBA-caliber teammates.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:40 pm
by Nivek
A few observations from Crawford's triple-double last night:

1) I've never seen a player work so hard to get bad shots.
2) His triple-double was a classic case of bad process, good outcome.
3) Several of his assists were bad passes. Example -- leading Beal from an open 3 to a long 2.
4) Despite the preceding 3 observations, he actually made genuine PG plays in the 4th quarter and OT.
5) It's tough not to like his effort. I just wish he was a better player.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 9:00 pm
by fishercob
My frustration is that he would be a better player if he made better decisions. It's not hard to not throw up leaning 3's early in the shot clock, and the like. Some might like his "edge" -- that he plays with something to prove. I'd prefer if he just played with a brain. He just doesn't strike me as a winning player; show me a team for which JC is playing big minutes, and I'll show you a bad team.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:45 pm
by hands11
You guys are like sunshine on a cloudy day. :lol:

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 11:35 pm
by TGW
fishercob wrote:My frustration is that he would be a better player if he made better decisions. It's not hard to not throw up leaning 3's early in the shot clock, and the like. Some might like his "edge" -- that he plays with something to prove. I'd prefer if he just played with a brain. He just doesn't strike me as a winning player; show me a team for which JC is playing big minutes, and I'll show you a bad team.


This. If he were on any team but the Wizards, his ass would be firmly on the bench.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 11:52 pm
by payitforward
Well I've made this point before, including citing numbers, but there's no question Jordan Crawford is greatly improved so far this season (600+ minutes). He's a much better player.

Unfortunately, "much better" does not mean "good." He's still below average among all guards playing heavy minutes. Considerably below average.

On the numbers, that is. YMMV (if you want it to).

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:24 am
by MF23
Jordan Crawford has improved to me. He's not a good NBA player but if he can get to the line a shoot balanced jump shots he could become an alright NBA player. I actually like him playing pg, it makes him think about the offense. Long way to go but I see signs he could stick in the league.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 8:58 pm
by hands11
MF23 wrote:Jordan Crawford has improved to me. He's not a good NBA player but if he can get to the line a shoot balanced jump shots he could become an alright NBA player. I actually like him playing pg, it makes him think about the offense. Long way to go but I see signs he could stick in the league.


Exactly. Its not only the best position for him to play, but its the position this team has been in need of the most.

Crawford at PG allows him to grow the most and produce the most because it forces him to use his total understanding of the game and it focuses his skills. As a PG, it makes him less of a chucker because he is looking to pass the ball to start the game. And the ball is already in his hands so he can conserves his energy instead of running around to get it only to initiate the offense with less time which makes him chuck more. Hell, he was basically playing PG when it was him and Mack out there together. Mack had zero skills when in the half court. All he did was bring the ball up. He is their best ball handler as a guard. He is their best at taking it to the basket and passing. He is actually pretty efficient shooting off balance on drives when things break down. If he could only get some more fouls called that would show up even more in his eff.

It has taken this team way to long to figure this out. I still even wonder if they have given the starting line up last game. He should have been playing some back up PG last year. He would be so much farther along and he would have been ready to start there this year with Wall out. If they did that, they could have started with

Crawford, Price and Mack and right now we would be seeing
Crawford and Mack.

Beal would have had an easier time of things even if they insisted on starting him from day 1

And with those two things, everything would have looked better. They would have won way more of those close games. Specially not going down 10 plus every first quarter.

They had to be wanting to tank from day 1. Just doesn't make sense any other way.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 9:02 pm
by jivelikenice
The problem with Crawford is what do you do with him? He's a RFA after next season. He was supposed to be a 6th man, but has proven that he needs to control the ball to be effective. It would be INSANE to sign him to an extension so do you just let him walk or do you trade him? He's not a good enough shooter to be counted on as a 6th man in my opinion and if he's starting here long-term, we have no chance at being a good team.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 9:10 pm
by tontoz
jivelikenice wrote:The problem with Crawford is what do you do with him? He's a RFA after next season. He was supposed to be a 6th man, but has proven that he needs to control the ball to be effective. It would be INSANE to sign him to an extension so do you just let him walk or do you trade him? He's not a good enough shooter to be counted on as a 6th man in my opinion and if he's starting here long-term, we have no chance at being a good team.


It isn't a problem until the end of next season. I don't see the point of worrying about it now. There are much bigger problems to address with this team.

RFAs rarely get good offers anyway so there shouldn't be any urgency to resign him.

Re: Jordan Crawford

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:43 pm
by DCZards
jivelikenice wrote:The problem with Crawford is what do you do with him? He's a RFA after next season. He was supposed to be a 6th man, but has proven that he needs to control the ball to be effective. It would be INSANE to sign him to an extension so do you just let him walk or do you trade him? He's not a good enough shooter to be counted on as a 6th man in my opinion and if he's starting here long-term, we have no chance at being a good team.


I think you resign Crawford. I like the idea of a sixth man with the "big balls" and clutch shooting ability that JC has shown this year. It also helps that he can play both guard positions.