No single player better epitomizes Boston's (10-12) unexpectedly good (relatively speaking in the wasteland that is the Atlantic Division) start in 2013-14 than Jordan Crawford. When he was acquired last season from Washington, he seemed like a terrible fit: a me-first guy on a team of mostly unselfish players. That's why then head coach Doc Rivers buried him on the bench.
It's been a completely different story for Crawford this season, with Rajon Rondo still out recovering from knee surgery and Brad Stevens in charge, Crawford has been the de-facto point guard since Avery Bradley is an awful ball-handler and can't be trusted with the most important job on a basketball team. To everyone's surprise, Crawford is playing better than he ever has in his four years in the NBA. Today he was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week while Portland power forward LaMarcus Aldridge received the honors for the Western Conference.
In three games last week (all Celtics wins), Crawford had 25 points and five assists against the Bucks on Tuesday, 22 points and eight assists against the Nuggets on Friday and 23 points and seven assists in Boston's blowout win at New York yesterday afternoon. He's also shooting 3-pointers at a very high clip lately. He had four vs. Milwaukee, two vs. Denver and six vs. New York.
What remains to be seen is what the C's do with Crawford once Rondo returns, then again maybe that won't be for a while (a man can dream, right?). Regardless, Crawford has proven to be a solid NBA player and now he suddenly is valuable either to Boston's future or they can trade him for something decent in return.
Boston is at Brooklyn (6-14) tomorrow night (7:30, CSN) to face the ghost of Kevin Garnett with bozo rookie head coach Jason Kidd intentionally spilling drinks on the court.
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