Jordan Crawford Reportedly to Sign with Bulls: Latest Details and Reaction
The NBA preseason is just weeks away, and the Chicago Bulls took a step toward bolstering their training-camp roster with the addition of a veteran guard Thursday.
According to Yahoo Sports' Shams Charania, the Bulls have agreed to bring Jordan Crawford aboard on a nonguaranteed training-camp deal.
Crawford, 26, hasn't appeared in an NBA game since the 2013-14 season, but he stayed busy last year, bouncing around between the D-League and Chinese Basketball Association, before playing for the Dallas Mavericks' summer league team in Las Vegas.
Since being selected in the first round of the 2010 draft, Crawford has played for the Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors.
The microwave scorer has averaged 12.2 points over the course of four NBA seasons, but he's shot just 40.5 percent from the field and 30.6 percent from three.
And as NBA scribe Nate Duncan noted, Crawford's ball-dominant, volume-scoring approach would have been a more logical addition for a former iteration of the Bulls:
Under former head coach Tom Thibodeau, the Bulls were known for playing a slower, more deliberate style that ultimately saw the offense devolve into periods of stagnancy that begged for off-the-dribble creativity. Last season, Chicago ranked 23rd in pace, generating 92.8 possessions per 48 minutes.
But with new head coach Fred Hoiberg in tow, the team is expected to experience a stylistic 180 when it comes to tempo.
"We like to get out and play with pace and play with spacing," Hoiberg said at his introductory press conference, according to ESPNChicago.com's Nick Friedell. "I think we ran more pick-and-roll than anybody in college basketball. We really like to flow into an offense as opposed to coming down and getting set on every possession."
With Derrick Rose penciled in as the Bulls' starting point guard and Aaron Brooks, Kirk Hinrich and E'Twaun Moore all signed to guaranteed deals for the upcoming season, per BasketballInsiders.com, it's hard to envision Crawford cracking the final 15-man roster given his fairly one-dimensional skill set.
All statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com unless noted otherwise.
