Nets finally get their man in Blazers’ Crabbe

Swap Nicholson for Forward with Superior 3-Point Shooting Touch

July 26, 2017 By John Torenli, Sports Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Allen Crabbe is the newest Brooklyn Net after general manager Sean Marks finally landed the sharp-shooting forward, one year after inking him to a $75 million offer sheet that Portland matched last summer. AP Photo by Frank Franklin II

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It took just over a year, but Sean Marks finally got his man.

The Brooklyn general manager continued his summer of wheeling, dealing and rebuilding the league-worst Nets on Tuesday afternoon, cementing a deal with the Portland Trail Blazers for the services of sharp-shooting forward Allen Crabbe, whom he failed to land last July as a restricted free agent.

Marks originally inked Crabbe to a four-year, $75 million offer sheet last summer, one of four players he tried to acquire in that fashion over the last two years. But the Blazers matched the offer, and retained the 25-year-old Los Angeles native’s services.

Crabbe, who will receive a team-high $19.3 million for the upcoming 2017-18 campaign, enjoyed his best season as a professional last year with the Blazers.

He averaged 10.7 points per contest while hitting an eye-popping 44 percent of his 3-point attempts, good for second-best in the entire league among qualifying players.

Those numbers figure to improve exponentially in Downtown Brooklyn as Crabbe started just seven of the 79 games he participated in for Portland last season.

He will likely be head coach Kenny Atkinson’s starting small forward, a position the Nets had been filling with combo guards during their disastrous 20-62 finish to the 2016-17 season.

Marks got rid of forward Andrew Nicholson, a player he acquired last February from Washington along with former Nets guard Marcus Thornton, and the remaining three years and approximately $20 million left on his contract in the deal.

Nicholson will be released by Portland and likely clear waivers following the swap, making him an unrestricted free agent.

Crabbe joins recently acquired forward DeMarre Carroll, whom Marks picked up, along with a trio of draft picks, from Toronto two weeks ago as key pieces to the roster overhaul the hard-working GM began in earnest back in June, when he dealt all-time Net Brook Lopez to the Los Angeles Lakers for budding star guard D’Angelo Russell and veteran center Timofey Mozgov.

Originally selected by Cleveland with the 31st overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, Crabbe was traded to Portland that very evening.

The 6-foot-6, 215-pound University of California alum has averaged 8.3 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.1 assists while logging just under 23 minutes per night in his first 226 NBA games, only 24 of which have been starts.

He will be playing a lot more here in Brooklyn as Atkinson and Marks are finally getting an opportunity to put their imprint on a franchise that has gone a collective 41-123 over the past two seasons while trying to climb out of a hole that was created by former GM Billy King when he traded a slew of future draft picks for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce during the summer of 2013.

Atkinson’s projected starting five for 2017-18 will likely feature Jeremy Lin and Russell in the back court, with Crabbe, Carroll and Mozgov up front.

That will bump talented young players like Caris LeVert, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Sean Kilpatrick and Brooklyn’s own Isaiah Whitehead into reserve duty, but that group should be more productive coming off the bench after receiving tons of playing time last year under Atkinson.

Also, the Nets are looking forward to the development of rookie center Jarrett Allen, who was drafted by Brooklyn in the first round of last month’s NBA Draft at Downtown’s Barclays Center.

“We know that none of us are happy — and that includes our players — winning 20 games,” Marks admitted from the team’s HSS Training Center in Sunset Park earlier this summer.

“We know we have to build on this, we have to continue to build and continue to get the right caliber of players to fit into this group and be strategic along the way.”

Overall, Marks is enjoying a great summer of changing the franchise’s look and basketball culture.

But whether that ultimately results in a better won-loss record come next season, and the team’s first playoff berth since 2014-2015, is yet to be determined.

Nothing But Net: The NBA Finance Committee cleared the way for billionaire Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov to sell a minority stake in the franchise, while maintaining full possession of his shares in Barclays Center. Prokhorov, who has been steadfast in his desire to maintain his full ownership in the Downtown arena while dealing off a part of the team, will finally be allowed to sell to a minority owner, if the NBA board of governors signs off on the split of the two assets as well. By the time the Nets hit the court for the 2017-18 season, Prokhorov will be entering his second full year of owning both the Nets and Barclays. The franchise is currently valued at just under $2 billion dollars.