Will Jamal Crawford and Other Salvaged Vets Follow Carmelo Anthony's Example?
There's no telling how the NBA's attempted restart will go as coronavirus cases continue to spike in Florida, but in a truncated season and playoffs already full of intrigue, these comeback tours—along with those of Carmelo Anthony, Dion Waiters and Joakim Noah—will provide an unexpected additional layer of entertainment.
As the 22 teams headed to Disney World this week to finalize their rosters, they've been forced to make changes because of circumstances nobody could have seen coming at the beginning of the season. The Brooklyn Nets, already down superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving because of long-term injuries, have also lost Spencer Dinwiddie, DeAndre Jordan and Taurean Prince to positive COVID-19 tests, leaving them barely able to field a full team in Orlando.
To address some of those holes, they've added Jamal Crawford and soon should add Michael Beasley, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium.
The 40-year-old Crawford scored 51 points in his final game last season with the Phoenix Suns but has been unsigned since then. Beasley has been out of the league since the middle of last season after playing the first half of 2018-19 with the Los Angeles Lakers. Both are getting another shot as the Nets cling to one of the last two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference, though Beasley will miss five games for violating the Anti-Drug policy last April.
JR Smith is also getting a lifeline. Lakers guard Avery Bradley opted out last week from playing the season in the bubble, and Smith—who shares agents with LeBron James in Rich Paul and made four straight trips to the Finals with James in Cleveland—got the call to fill the void. In helping James pursue his first title with the Lakers, he'll have an opportunity to redeem himself after his infamous last-second error in Game 1 of the 2018 Finals, in which he forgot the score of a game the Cavs had a chance to win.
Neither of these three has played NBA basketball in a year or more, and there's no telling how much they have left in the tank. But if they want a blueprint for how to successfully navigate this sort of comeback tour, they have it on-site in Carmelo Anthony.
Before the pandemic turned this season upside down, Anthony was one of the year's unlikely success stories. The future Hall of Famer spent a full year on the sidelines after disappointing stints in Oklahoma City and Houston before getting picked up by the Portland Trail Blazers following a spate of injuries at power forward.
The Blazers' low-risk, high-reward gamble paid off as well as anyone could have reasonably expected, with Anthony providing a consistent third scoring option behind Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. Early on, he even won a Western Conference Player of the Week award.
Not only did his soft landing in Portland restore his standing in the league, but it also helped him transition into the later chapter of his career that he had been resisting up until that point. Now, he's as comfortable as one can be given, well, everything going on.
"It's not what I'm gonna remember; it's what I'm not gonna remember about this year," Anthony said Tuesday on a Zoom call with reporters. "The joy of being able to come back, and then losing my brother Kobe the same year and dealing with that, and then the coronavirus. It's been a weird season emotionally. I'll never forget it because it almost jump-started something for me. I was able to take what I experienced and learned and figured out and apply that not just to basketball but to life. So that's where I'm at right now."
Anthony will have the opportunity to help Portland sneak into the playoffs, but it will be an uphill battle. The Blazers enter the eight seeding games trailing the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies by three-and-a-half games, just within the four-game threshold to trigger a play-in series. They'll have to tread water at the very least against a tough schedule.
Anthony has excelled in his role this season, but those responsibilities are going to shift. For one thing, Portland is getting back starting center Jusuf Nurkic, out since last March with a leg injury, and starting power forward Zach Collins, out since October after undergoing shoulder surgery. With Collins back and Trevor Ariza opting out of the bubble because of a family situation, Anthony will move to small forward, a position he hasn't played effectively since his time with the New York Knicks.
Despite that, he doesn't expect his responsibilities to change much.
"My role is to continue to do what I've been doing since I've been here," Anthony said. "That's been clear-cut since before I even got here. It's worked, to an extent. And now, we have an opportunity to put those pieces back into play."
Should Anthony and the Blazers grab the eighth seed, they'll face a Lakers team that has added not only Smith but also Dion Waiters, who signed a deal just before the season shut down after an unceremonious exit from Miami. Waiters had yet to appear in a game in Los Angeles. Between the two of them, the Lakers hope they'll be able to add enough scoring to take some responsibility from James and Anthony Davis.
The other Los Angeles team, the Clippers, is also getting in on the comeback-tour fun. The team signed 2014 Defensive Player of the Year and two-time All-Star center Joakim Noah to a 10-day contract in early March, but he never took the court. Now that the season is set to begin again, they re-upped him on a deal for the rest of the season. Noah spent most of the 2018-19 campaign with the Memphis Grizzlies and played well in a limited role following two disastrous seasons with the Knicks, but he was unsigned for most of this year. If he's healthy, he should be a nice fit backing up Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell.
The Clippers and Lakers are going into the relaunched season with championship expectations. The Blazers and Nets would have successful trips if they get into the playoffs and put up a fight in the first round. If nothing else, the presence of Crawford and Beasley will add some watchability and unpredictability to a Brooklyn team that had taken more significant hits to its rotation than any other.
There will be plenty to watch at Disney World over three months that will be filled with uncertainty both on the court and with the virus. Some familiar faces getting to rewrite their final chapters looks to be one of the most compelling threads to come out of all of this.
