Jae Crowder
Jae Crowder continues to be one of Utah’s most important players with the third best net rating on the team among players that have logged significant minutes, trailing only Joe Ingles and Rudy Gobert, and he has the best offensive rating of the bunch. He’s also Utah’s leading bench scorer and fourth-best scorer overall.
That all sounds good, but it’s also somewhat concerning considering that his good offensive marks have come on putrid efficiency. I guess you could say that it’s good to see Jae finding ways to contribute even when his shots aren’t falling, but it also says a lot about how bad Utah’s offense has been as a whole.
He’s shooting a lousy 39 percent from the field and 29.2 percent from the perimeter on an extremely high 6.2 attempts per game, second on the team. In other words, Crowder has done some good things and he continues to be a net positive that plays very well with the starters, but his lack of efficiency and inconsistency have been irritating.
With those two aspects largely cancelling each other out, I suppose you could say that Crowder has been quite average this year. And as a result, I’m giving him an average grade.
First-quarter grade: C+