Jamal Crawford signed a deal for some amount of time at some amount of money--neither of which are of consequence--to play for Portland Trailblazers. This final piece of news, the team, is of paramount consequence as it means that Jamal Crawford, who is essentially the modern-day Martin Luther King, Jr of the movement against shot discrimination, has landed on a team that combines his two loves--taking shots and passive resistance to defense and the other non-shooting aspects of basketball.
Looking at the Blazers roster Crawford only has LaMarcus Aldridge, who's been having off-season health issues, and Gerald Wallace to compete with for shots. Consider the following names: Marcus Camby, Greg Oden, Kurt Thomas, Nicolas Batum, Earl Barron. Those are guys that shoot as the last line of defense. Literally nobody open, out of dribbles, and seconds left on the shot clock. After those few you start to come across names, like Luke Babbitt and Patty Mills, that if you think for a second that day one of practice Jamal doesn't inoculate in those young men the belief in the absolute heresy it would be for them to even think of taking a shot during a game then you’re kidding yourself.
You see when Crawford signs with a team its very Munich. Like he says he’s going to help the team win and play D and pass the ball, but based on a reasonably large sample size of his ten-plus year career everyone involved knows such commitments are a mere formality. He ain’t winning games, he’s shooting the ball at least every other time down the court, and he genuinely doesn’t care if teammates, fans, management, whoever become disenchanted with him because he wants and is content with such a basic facet of life—shooting the ball at any and every opportunity. It is for this philosophy that his signing with a team where he won’t get less than 15 shots a game that this is DBSF’s very own personal version of what would be for most other people a biopic of David Byrne as played by Ryan Gosling.
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