Jae Crowder happy to finally be out of Phoenix, ready for season debut with Bucks: ‘It’s behind me now’
Jay Crowder doesn’t want to go into the details of what happened in his final months with the Phoenix Suns.
But since he’s been at home for the first half of this season, watching his teammates and everyone else in the league play while he’s gone, he’s been angry.
“I was frustrated because I knew I had to be in these situations at some point, and I haven’t been in these situations for three or four months,” he said on Monday. via The Associated Press.
Now, however, this must change.
Crowder is set to make his season debut for the Milwaukee Bucks, who signed him to a deal with the Brooklyn Nets that acquired Crowder from Phoenix just before the trade deadline. He will make his official debut some time after the All-Star break.
Crowder and the Suns announced before the start of the season that he would not join the team by mutual decision. It took the Suns before the trade deadline to find a deal to move Crowder, which did not sit well with him.
But at least now, he said, it’s over.
“I just feel like it’s over now,” Crowder said. via The Associated Press. “Something happened inside of us that they asked me to leave inside, so I’m going to fulfill their wish. Apparently I’ve been working with these guys as a trading partner for a few months now. what they said they were going to do. It took longer than we all expected, but it was done.”
Crowder averaged 9.4 points and 5.3 rebounds last season with the Suns, his second most in the franchise. The Bucks are the eighth team for the 32-year-old in his 11-year league career, which began after the Dallas Mavericks selected him with the 34th overall pick in the 2012 draft. He made the NBA Finals twice, first with the Miami Heat in 2020 and then again with the Suns the following year, but never won the title.
Now with the Bucks, he has a good chance of reaching his third Finals in four seasons. Milwaukee has won 10 games in a row and will take on the top-seeded Boston Celtics on Tuesday, who are just 1.5 games behind the Bucks for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
“He’s doing everything he can to win,” coach Mike Budenholzer said of Crowder. via The Associated Press. “He does so many little things on both ends of the court, defensively and offensively. He has toughness in attack, he sets up screens. He understands distance, understands timing. He won a ton.”
Source: sports.yahoo.com
