Utah Jazz: Jae Crowder welcomed to Utah, but likely won’t play until Sunday

The Utah Jazz’s newest player Jae Crowder has received a warm welcome to Utah, but likely won’t take the floor until Sunday at the earliest.

The trade deadline has come and gone and the Utah Jazz were active as expected as they wound up netting Jae Crowder after dealing Rodney Hood to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Joe Johnson to the Sacramento Kings in a three-team trade.

Although Crowder has some work to do to get assimilated into a new system and to get back to his old ways of the 2016-17 season in Boston, both head coach Quin Snyder and general manager Dennis Lindsey made it clear that they’re excited about his acquisition.

As the Deseret News’ Eric Woodyard recently reported, below is a snippet of what Lindsey had to say about the former Cavalier and Celtic:

"“Jae is someone we’ve long admired. He’s really versatile defensively and can play really two through four with switches and physicality. His build is quite obvious and the systems that he’s played in with Dallas, Boston and Cleveland, we’ve seen enough to think that he can mesh very well in how we play. We’re really anxious to get him here.”"

Similarly, Coach Snyder had the following to add:

Both made it quite clear that they feel confident that he’ll be an exceptional fit in the Jazz system once he gets properly integrated. Unfortunately, he isn’t set to play on Friday night against the Charlotte Hornets as all players involved in the trade must first pass a physical. And as was reported by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, Sacramento’s Iman Shumpert isn’t expected to receive his physical until Saturday.

Leave it to the Kings to mess this up for all of us…

Though McMenamin didn’t mention it in the tweet above, the delay on Shumpert’s physical will not only hold out George Hill and Rodney Hood for the Cavs, but it will also prevent Jae Crowder from hitting the court with the Jazz in any way, shape or form, including in Friday’s bout against Charlotte.

However, assuming Shumpert’s physical does take place on Saturday, one would assume that Crowder would be ready to go by Sunday’s contest against the Portland Trail Blazers. That’s set to be a crucial game with potentially major playoff implications, so it will be nice to have him, but it would have been even better if he could’ve gotten a game under his belt against a less talented Charlotte team before heading to Rip City.

Nevertheless, he was in Salt Lake on Thursday night and has already met with head coach Quin Snyder. He was also spotted in Utah’s practice facility on Friday morning, so he’s certainly being integrated in with the team as best as he can. Add that all together, and it seems almost a guarantee that he will indeed play in Sunday’s contest, but we’ll be sure to confirm that once it’s been made official.

Although we won’t get to see him in action until then at the earliest, it seems like things are already off to a nice start for Crowder in Utah. He was welcomed on Twitter by Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Rudy Gobert, Thabo Sefolosha and former teammate Jonas Jerebko, who has heralded him as one of his all-time favorite teammates. Crowder responded to each of these as well as gave a nice shout-out to Jazz fans, as you can see in the various tweets below:

With how thrilled Jae Crowder’s teammates seem to be to have him, it is disappointing that we won’t get to see him in the first game following the trade deadline. Utah is putting a seven-game winning streak on the line and has a chance to get within one game of .500.

Next: Utah Jazz fans freak over Rodney Hood trade in Twitter vids

Nevertheless, the wait will likely make his debut that much sweeter. Sunday’s game in Portland was already going to be a fascinating one and if Crowder does indeed suit up for that contest, it will only be all the better.

Utah tips off against the Hornets at 7:00 PM MT on Friday and against the Blazers at 7:00 PM MT on Sunday in Portland.