Jamal Crawford frustrated at Portland Trail Blazers, could opt out at season’s end – NBA Recap
Veteran guard Jamal Crawford joined the Portland Trail Blazers at the start of the current season among much fanfare. The Trail Blazers had a young vibrant team that looked ominously strong heading in the season. The addition of Crawford was thus viewed
as a big boost to a side that could possibly be primed for a big playoffs push.
Crawford himself was pretty excited to be heading to Portland. He had toiled hard at the Atlanta Hawks last season and was an established scorer, something the gritty Trail Blazers could use. He was also happy that he would be playing along some talented
players, such as Gerald Wallace and LaMarcus Aldridge.
Things though have not gone to plan, and frustration is the word to describe how Crawford feels about it.
“It’s frustrating, especially after the way we started the season,” Crawford told HOOPSWORLD. “We started 7-2 and we were one of the top seeds in the West a few weeks into the season. When you have that kind of success early, every loss after that is pretty
dramatic.”
The world around Jamal has changed quite dramatically indeed. The Trail Blazers are not the team he came into. The forever injured Brandon Roy and Greg Oden have been offloaded and the steely duo of Marcus Camby and Gerald Wallace has been traded.
Meanwhile, the Trail Blazers also fired head coach Nate McMillan.
“Whenever you lose and fail to live up to expectations, anything can happen. We saw that at the trade deadline with a lot of players being dealt and then with Coach McMillan getting fired.” Crawford said.
Portland have obviously hit the reset button. They invested in a project for long, but it did not bear fruits. Largely because of the devastating injuries to the talented duo of Oden and g*y. With things simply refusing to go their way, the executives at
the Portland franchise decided to start over.
However rebuilding is not what Crawford came to be part of. He signed for a franchise that was on the up and looking to make that push onto a championship level team, even be a dark horse for the NBA title this year.
The fact that they haven’t, and have instead regressed, leaves Jamal in no man’s land. The player has an option to end his association with the Trail Blazers at the end of the season, and he is seriously considering taking it.
At his age, he knows he doesn’t have time to be part of a lengthy rebuilding process, while he is also interested to test the free agency again. It wouldn’t be a surprise then if he heads out at the end of the year.
“If I opt-out, I think it’ll be really cool to have a traditional free agency,” Crawford said.
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