Jamal Crawford and Usage
Seth Johnston | Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 8:55PM 
“Iso!”
Jamal Crawford is a guard who has no trouble scoring and the Blazers could use another scoring threat at guard. I agree with that poorly written sentence.
Signing Jamal Crawford to a two-year, $10 million contract was a good move for the Blazers. I’m skeptical of that one.
The alignment between what Crawford can do and what Portland needs makes this union seem like a good fit. The Blazers lack a guard off the bench who can score. Crawford was a guard off the bench who could score for the last two seasons with the Hawks. In fact, during the 2009-10 season he performed this role so well that he was recognized with the Sixth Man of the Year award. That is enough to say that this move could very well work out for the Blazers.
With a closer look some doubts emerge. To be clear, I don’t think that Crawford is too old to contribute; he is only thirty-one. I don’t think he requires an up-tempo system to succeed; he succeeded with an Atlanta team that was 27th in pace both seasons that he was there. I’m not even alarmed at his low efficiency (41% career field goal percentage), well maybe a little bit.
Mostly I’m worried about usage. Usage is the percentage of team plays used by that player while he is on the floor. (Word to Basketball-Reference.com.) To illustrate how Crawford’s usage has related to his production over his career take a look at the chart below. The red line represents Crawford’s usage over his career. The blue line represents his PER, which measures per minute production and is standardized so that a score of 15 is considered average.
For Crawford, PER and usage follow a similar pattern. Generally, when one has been up so has the other, and when one has been down so has the other. Crawford’s career usage rate is 23.4. In seven of his eleven seasons his average usage rate has been less than his career mark. In four seasons his usage has been above his career mark. In the seven seasons he has spent below his career usage average, Crawford’s average PER is 13.07. In the four seasons Crawford has been above his career average usage his PER is 16.2.
The takeaway is simple: Give Crawford a lot of touches and he has a good chance at producing at above average levels. If he doesn’t get enough touches, don’t count on it. Over his career Crawford has not produced at even average levels when his usage rate is not high. This is a source of concern as he joins the Blazers. Below is a chart showing usage levels of the Blazers last season, with shooting guards highlighted in red.
It is not clear that Crawford will have the usage he needs to be effective with the Blazers. The offense may change somewhat this season, but will still rightly revolve around LaMarcus Aldridge for around thirty-eight minutes per game. Crawford is not likely to see the amount of touches commanded by Brandon Roy. He will be a player off the bench and off the ball that will usually be the second scoring option.
Crawford will have phenomenal nights either way. He will dazzle with his flashy moves. But if he produces at levels as low as these figures suggest he might, he will have hardly been worth the two-year, $10 million contract.
Reader Comments (20)
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Your use of pretty excel tables warms the cockles of my heart. Also, I completely agree with the data you have presented. He's not a 1, he's a 2. Wes is going to get the lions share at the 2 in all likelihood, unless they slide Wes over to the 3....you know where Batum is the back up and he totally sucks.....
Forget the analysis, I just want to pop into NEPO42 and watch a game already.
This is the kind of thing I do for a living (not with basketball, though that would make my job a lot more interesting!) so I have to take issue with your methods. Crawford has two outlier seasons: an abysmal 8.5 PER as a rookie which naturally coincided with low usage, and 18.4 two years ago which was also his highest usage season. Taking out his two outliers, all of his remaining years are between 14.2 and 16, which are indistinguishable seasons according to John Hollinger (and give us a "pretty good player" to a "third banana"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Efficiency_Rating#Reference_guide
Also, you're assuming cause and effect when there's no evidence of it. I'd say it's more likely the effect is reversed: a player who is performing better will get used more.
My methods would not withstand empirical scrutiny, no doubt. It's still enough for me to be concerned. Crawford is a high usage player, and players not named Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge don't often get the level of usage Crawford has had for most of his career. Crawford's usage hasn't been below 21.5 since he was a rookie. How will he perform? I have no clue.
I'd feel better about this very good post if you provided more data about Atlanta, particularly because while Atlanta's is a more guard driven system, Joe Johnson was a very, very high usage dude. Additionally, I see Jamal spending significant amounts of time in a unit where nobody else can score the ball - a second tier of Jamal, Batum, Chris Johnson, Armon Johnson... this is a unit with scoring problems. Finally, if Felton can't stay healthy because of conditioning issues (a real possibility) or can't play heavy minutes because of conditioning issues (a real possibility), Crawford will see time at the PG, and with the starters. I don't think it's as bad as all that.
Joe Johnson's usage rate the last two seasons with the Hawks is 26.3. Like you said, a high usage dude. Crawford's usage rate with the Hawks for those seasons was 25.8 (the year he won 6th Man) and 23.4 last season. When you consider that Aldridge will likely be on the floor give or take 38 minutes per game, that doesn't leave much time for Crawford to be the focus of the offense.
One takeaway I'm having is this: You signed Crawford, now you better figure out a way to get him high volume touches. Having him handle some of the backup PG role is a way of doing that, but I wonder if that takes away from his main strength, which I've heard is scoring, and will make him less effective.
The removal of outlier years argument is valid. I would counter that by simply stating that in the context of evaluating PER as it relates to utilization, you would want to include as much data as possible. There aren't enough data points to throw away 18% of them to paint a accurate picture of the thesis "Jamal Crawford has been above average when utilized within an offense greater than X."
This Sam Johnson guy has some good points here but fails to acknowledge the Nate Factor. Obviously Nate will fit the round Jamal through one of his many square pegs and everyone will be delighted.
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