Crawford Trade, Even Worse On Second Glance

Looking back at the lost season that was, many moves stand out as foolish, shortsighted or just plain confusing. The Golden State Warriors gave $50 million to a player who could do nothing but score, traded a first round draft pick for a point guard that never saw the floor and finished out the season playing seven guys a game.

But one moment shines above all the rest in symbolizing the troubling state of the Warriors franchise. That would be the Jamal Crawford trade, a move so impulsive that it could have only come from a franchise fast slipping into late-90s form.

First we’ll look at the players.

Crawford is, simply put, an incredibly selfish player. Of course he can score and handle, but he seems to play the game without regard for teammates on offense (and to much regard on D, since he is not exactly shutting anyone down).

He is what he’s always been, a guy who gets decent stats on a bad teams, but lacks the understanding of how to play decent team basketball. Shockingly, he has never been to the playoffs, and has never even been on a squad that won more than 33 games.

In retrospect, Al Harrington was in a bad spot. His game did have many flaws (that whole rebounding thing for one), he was feuding with his coach and most importantly he was hitting an unsightly 32.9 percent of his shots.

The first question is simple. Why would anyone really want Jamal Crawford? There is nothing appealing about him as a player, beyond the scoring outbursts, and those usually come with weary teammates standing around, waiting for the offense to involve more than one guy. Was it really worth taking him on to get rid of Harrington five months early?

But after seeing their contracts, the deal just looks truly pathetic.

Harrington had an expiring contract (around $9 million in value). Those things are treated like gold in the NBA. A $9 million one (along with some decent prospects) got Pau FREEKING Gasol and a title for LA. Furthermore, the Dubs could actually use the cap relief seeing as they signed three massive deals last summer.

But no.

Instead they had to get Crawford’s contract which has a player option for the next two seasons. The team literally traded an expiring deal for a long term one, and got a player who won’t help the team win.

Why must the team go for any 20 point per game scorer they find? Do they not understand that points are a function of shots? Don’t they know that signing seven guys who average 20 does not mean the team with score 14 per game?

And finally this whole tumbling mess of a deal falls at the feet of one Don Nelson. We know that Harrington and Nelson were feuding. We were told that their troubled relationship was part of the reason for the deal.

What Nellie needed was some patience. We’ve seen how good he is at ignoring players on the bench (see: not putting young guys into games while Rob Kurz is seeing court time). Yet he couldn’t ignore Harrington for the greater good?

With Crawford it was even worse since Nellie asked him to opt out of the last two year of his contract. Nelson asked him to leave $19 million on the table, for the chance to test the free agent waters. Considering the economy and the fact that no team in its right mind would give Crawford even seven million per year, he wisely declined that request.

The irony, of course, is that Nelson didn’t ever understand why the request was foolish.

But this is the way it’s going in Oakland and until management shapes up and starts pulling off some decent moves, the fans, which were so energetic and excited a few short seasons ago, will be left searching for a reason to believe again.