Cleveland Cavaliers: Will the real Jae Crowder please stand up?

Jae Crowder was supposed to be the lynchpin of the Kyrie Irving trade. He’s a defensive savant with three-point shooting ability. He’s highly rated in all the advanced metrics. Can THAT player start playing?

I’ll keep this article simple. Jae Crowder is by far (more than J.R. Smith even) the most disappointing Cleveland Cavalier this season. He’s fallen off the map, in a starter role, for a team that should make a fourth-consecutive NBA Finals. What happened? Did he and Jeff Green switch bodies?

Probably not. What did happen was Brad Stevens. The Celtics (like the Spurs before them and still) are making players look like they are better than they actually are. Kyrie Irving is NOT a top defensive player; I don’t care what the stats say. Let’s take a look at Jae Crowder’s history to see if we can uncover this mystery.

2012-2014

With the 34th pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select: Jae Crowder, Marquette University.

Wait five minutes.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Dallas Mavericks have made a trade.

Crowder came into the league with the Dallas Mavericks after playing four years in college. He was a second round pick with low expectations. He ended up playing 78 games for that team, starting 16.

In his 2+ seasons in Dallas, Crowder averaged 4.6 points and 2.3 rebounds in 181 games on about 16 minutes per game. He shot 41% from the field and 33% from three-point range. Jae never cracked a box plus-minus over 0.6.

He averaged out to an eighth or ninth player, in the rotation, but solidly on the bench.

During his time in Dallas, the Mavericks team ratings were as follows:

2012-2013: Offensive Rating – 105.9 (14th), Defensive Rating – 106.5 (19th)

2013-2014: Offensive Rating – 111.2 (3rd), Defensive Rating – 108.7 (22nd)

2014-2015: Offensive Rating – 109.5 (5th), Defensive Rating – 106.4 (20th)

Why are we looking at the team offensive and defensive ratings? I’ll get there in a bit. As you can see, the Mavericks were a bad defensive team the entire time Crowder was there.

Then, on December 19th, 2014, the Mavericks sent Crowder (along with three other players and two picks) to Boston for Rajon Rondo. That didn’t work out very well for the Mavericks. Boston had to match salaries, and Crowder was cheap. I doubt they thought he would turn into what he did.

2014-2017

So, midway through the 2014-15 season, Crowder plays for the Celtics. After going down to about ten minutes per game for the Mavericks that season, Crowder immediately sees an increase in playing time with the Celtics, up to 24 minutes including 17 starts in 57 games.

Over the course of the next two seasons, Crowder improved dramatically (something we may be seeing with Kyrie Irving in Celtics green). In his two complete seasons as a Boston Celtic, Crowder averaged 14.0 points, 5.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, and 1.4 steals per game on a 45.2/36.9/81.6 slash line. (He increased his free throw percentage by ten percentage points!)

What do they have in the water in Boston?

Those Celtics teams, all under Brad Stevens, had the following team ratings:

2014-2015: Offensive Rating – 104.7 (18th), Defensive Rating – 104.5 (12th)

2015-2016: Offensive Rating – 106.8 (10th), Defensive Rating – 103.6 (4th)

2016-2017: Offensive Rating – 111.2 (8th), Defensive Rating – 108.4 (13th)

During his time in Boston, Crowder’s box plus-minus was 0.5 at its worst (matching his best in Dallas) and 2.8 at its best. The key point here is that better Dallas offenses did not lead to better Crowder offensive box plus-minus, but better Boston defenses led to better defensive box plus-minus.

Which begs the question: is Crowder a product of the system? Or did he improve?

How many times have we seen players thrive in certain systems when they failed in others? For poor Cavs fans, players like Danny Green and Dion Waiters?

2017-2018

I’ll keep this part nice and short because it’s embarrassing. So far, Crowder has a -3.9 box plus/minus, including -2.5 defensive box plus/minus. He’s averaging 7.5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game, getting starters’ minutes at 25.9 per game. He’s shooting 38.7 percent from the field, 31.6 percent from three-point range and 80.0 percent from the charity stripe just a year after he shot 46.3 percent from the field, 39.8 percent from three-point range and 81.1 percent from three-point range.

He has a nice player efficiency rating (PER) of 8.3. I have nothing positive to say.

Projecting the rest of the season

Here’s where things get tricky. Let’s say Crowder improves to his mean. How will that happen? He 10.6 field goal attempts per year for the last two years and now he’s barely cracking six (6.3 field goal attempts per game). He had the ball in his hands a bit more, his usage was at 17.7 percent, which led to 2.0 assists per game, now he’s at 13.9% with 0.9 assists per game per game.

So is this on Tyronn Lue? Are we not using Crowder well? Or is Crowder just a product of a Boston Celtics system that created open looks for him and got him a lot of shots in a system of open shots?

To be determined.

*All stats gathered from www.basketball-reference.com