Los Angeles Clippers: The Jamal Crawford Enigma

Jamal Crawford has struggled at times this season but has been playing better in February and March. The Los Angeles Clippers will need to find out which version of the enigmatic Crawford will show up for the playoffs.

Jamal Crawford has been a scoring machine for many years. Crawford is probably most famous for two things: being one of the four players in NBA history to score 50 or more points in a game for three teams and being the all-time leader in four-point plays with 50.

His pure scoring ability has led him to three Sixth Man of the Year awards, also an NBA record.

The downside with Crawford is that he struggles to be effective in other ways. His dribbling may be spectacular, but his passing has never been anything more than mediocre. He also has struggled mightily on defense throughout his career.

Crawford has been maddeningly inconsistent this season for the Los Angeles Clippers. He had a miserable month of January after a decent December. However, Crawford has been excellent since January. He had a strong month of February and has been particularly hot since the All-Star break.

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While it is concerning that his strong play has coincided with one of the worst stretches of the Clippers’ season so far, Los Angeles will need him to continue to shoot well if they want to make noise in the playoffs.

Early Season Struggles

Although Jamal Crawford did shoot well in December, he really struggled to score efficiently prior to February. Crawford shot less than 40 percent from the floor in October and November.

While scoring efficiently has never been Crawford’s strong suit, he was missing some looks that would usually be easy points for him.

Crawford did manage to bump that number up to 43.1 percent in December, but he made only 33.3 percent of his triples. His True Shooting percentage was also below average at 52.2 percent.

Jamal then totally cratered in the month of January. With Blake Griffin and Chris Paul both missing significant time, much more of the scoring load fell on Crawford’s shoulders. Furthermore, there were not enough scoring options around to convince Crawford to not chuck up miserable shots:

A pull-up midrange jumper in traffic is the kind of shot that should be taken if all else fails. Those should be the looks that are thrown up with the shot clock basically expired. Instead, Crawford heaves this shot up with 14 seconds left.

Los Angeles Clippers

DeAndre Jordan has a free lane to the rim with only James Johnson in a position to contest. However, Jordan just stops as soon as he realizes that Crawford has already shot the ball.

Jamal Crawford shot 33.8 percent from the floor in January, and 29.3 percent from deep. His True Shooting percentage was an abysmal 42.0 percent.

Although he did boost his assist average somewhat during that time, his Usage Rate of 24.4 percent was his highest in a full month since February 2016, per Basketball-Reference. Crawford was forced to handle a lot of offensive responsibility and he did not live up to the challenge.

Red-Hot February

Jamal Crawford bounced back quite nicely from his rough month of January. He shot 45.1 percent from the field and 40.7 percent from deep. Crawford’s True Shooting percentage was a stellar 58.8 percent. Additionally, four of his 13 20-point games this season were in February.

The biggest change for Crawford came on above-the-break triples. After making just nine of 34 from that range in January, Crawford rained in 17 of his 44 attempts in February per NBA.com’s shot tracking data.

Playing alongside Blake Griffin gave Crawford far more open looks than he had in January:

Unlike in January, where his airspace was crowded on every play, Crawford has far more room on this play. Paul Millsap and Tim Hardaway Jr. both have to stay attached to Griffin on the screen play. That, in turn, leaves Crawford with room and time to shoot.

Even though this play also comes with a lot of time left on the shot clock, the decision-making involved is far better. Crawford might have time to work with, but he also has far more space than he did on the midrange shot above.

Playoff Performance

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Jamal Crawford has been on fire since Chris Paul returned. Although the sample size is small, he is shooting 44.6 percent overall and 41.6 percent with both Blake Griffin and Chris Paul healthy, even after an off night against the Timberwolves.

Crawford’s playoff stats are disappointing in comparison to his regular season numbers. That is certainly cause for concern for the Clippers; his mostly isolation-based scoring tends to bog down in the playoffs.

Crawford has shot 37.9 percent from the floor and 30.7 percent from deep in 62 career playoff games. Those numbers are far below his regular season career marks of 41.0 percent and 34.9 percent respectively.

However, Crawford can hit big shots in big moments. He put that on display again recently against the Knicks:

Jamal Crawford may be an enigma. He may be one of the most inconsistent players in the NBA. However, he has shown time and time again that he can pour in points in a hurry and change the tone of a game.

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While his past playoff performance is worrying, Crawford could easily get hot and stay hot. The Clippers will need him to play like February Jamal Crawford if they are going to play beyond late April.