The Portland Trail Blazers are still dominated by their backcourt, but Allen Crabbe’s emergence has been a welcome sight in Rip City.
No one would blame you if you had mistaken the name Allen Crabbe for a character from Harry Potter. In his first two NBA seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers, Crabbe played a grand total of 66 games and topped the 30-minute mark in exactly four of them. But for a Blazers team that lost four of its five starters over the summer, the third-year wing is making the most of his extended run.
Allen Crabbe’s 10.0 points and 2.3 rebounds per game on .490/.388/.867 shooting splits don’t scream “superstar,” but they’re a substantial step forward for a guy who held career averages of 3.0 points and 1.2 rebounds 36.4 percent shooting coming into the season.
Not only is Crabbe posting career highs in scoring, rebounds, assists, steals, field goal percentage, three-point percentage, free throw percentage and minutes, but he’s already surpassed his scoring total in the first two years of his career through the first 26 games of the 2015-16 season.
At 23 years old, the former California product was a relative unknown entering the season. Aside from his Odell Beckham Jr.-inspired hairdo that bears a strong resemblance to fescue, most casual fans wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup. Less than two months into the season, however, Crabbe has become a staple in Terry Stotts’ fourth quarter lineups.
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The reason? Crabbe is slowly but surely morphing into the kind of 3-and-D wing that any team would love to have. That’s not to say he’s a lockdown defender by any means, especially since he’s undersized when he’s forced to man the small forward position.
Crabbe’s on/off-court numbers aren’t kind to the impact he’s had, but with no one else capable of stepping into that same role, suffice it to say that his defensive footwork has vastly improved from his first few seasons in the league. For a rebuilding team that ranks 22nd in defensive rating, any progress on that end of the floor is a bonus.
It’s the offensive end where Crabbe has his largest impact, however. Though he was used sparingly before this season, the 6’6″ wing did knock down 36 of his first 99 three-point attempts in the association (36.4 percent). This season, he’s honed in on that defining asset, knocking down 38.8 percent of his 3.1 long range attempts per game.
With Crabbe being able to spread the floor, driving lanes open up for Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. Whenever one of Portland’s highly vaunted backcourt guards is cut off, Crabbe is capable of catching the kick-out pass and either knocking down the open shot or attacking the closing out defender off the bounce.
Brent Barry's Sunday Feast Player of the Week is Allen Crabbe! https://t.co/CWTKppmYkW
— NBA TV (@NBATV) December 14, 2015
Since December began, Stotts has trusted him with more minutes off the bench and Crabbe’s rewarded his head coach by scoring in double digits in seven of the team’s eight games. Crabbe is averaging 14.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game on 51.8 percent shooting from the field and 37.8 percent shooting from deep for the month, and the Blazers have outscored opponents by 3.5 points per 100 possessions over that span.
In his last eight games, Crabbe has set a new career high in scoring (18 points) and tied it twice, including a 7-for-10 night against the Indiana Pacers and an 8-for-14 performance against the Phoenix Suns that helped the Blazers get wins in both contests.
Allen Crabbe isn’t going to be a household name anytime soon, but if you’re wondering how a team comprised of Lillard, McCollum and a bunch of young role players is still winning games despite being expected to tank, look no further than the guy most commonly mistaken for a Harry Potter character.