Jae Crowder is pretty mad Celtics fans cheered his potential replacement

A quick glance at the box score suggests that Boston Celtics wing Jae Crowder had a good night in his team’s 115-104 win over the visiting Utah Jazz on Tuesday. Crowder put up 21 points on just 6-of-8 shooting (including 5-of-6 from beyond the arc) and held Utah star Gordon Hayward to a solid but non-prolific 23 points on 14 attempts. It was the kind of performance that has made Crowder such a valuable asset to the Celtics since he came to the team in December 2014.

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Basketball contest now | Free NBA Yahoo Cup entry]

However, Crowder ended the night in anything but a good mood. As he said after the game both to media members and on his Twitter account, cheers for Hayward from the TD Garden crowd got him very upset.

Those messages either came from Crowder or were retweeted by him in the aftermath of the win (and since been un-RT’d), so he doesn’t exactly have room to claim he was misquoted. He offered this comment about his future in Boston, too, although it has since been deleted (screengrab via NESN.com):

Crowder was upset for a simple reason — Celtics fans cheered for Hayward, an unrestricted free agent this summer who figures to be a target for Danny Ainge as he tries to add star-level talent to a roster known more for quality role players. Crowder is a very good player who most definitely belongs to the current group, and he would presumably have his job taken away by Hayward or any other max-contract small forward who opts for Boston’s particular shade of green. It’s understandable that the incumbent starter would be mad about that scenario, especially when he’s one of the best players on a top-three seed in the East.

[Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

It’s not as clear that Crowder should have responded to that disrespect so forcefully. Ainge and the Celtics have made no secret of their plans to pursue stars in free agency, which means that Crowder and several of his teammates could be moved or have their roles diminished next offseason. This is a fact of the 2016-17 Celtics — everyone who has paid any attention to the franchise knows that they have the assets to obtain very good players via trade, free agency, and the draft. Crowder presumably knows this and has accepted it on some level — otherwise we would have heard from him on the subject before Tuesday night.

Of course, there’s a clear difference between being made aware of a situation and having it thrown in your face when you’re working very hard to ensure the team wins a game against a tough Western Conference opponent. Crowder probably fought back a little too hard in this instance, but his anger is understandable. No player wants to be told he can be discarded at a moment’s notice, especially when he’s arguably getting the better of the matchup with his potential replacement. The man deserves some sympathy at the very least.

– – – – – – –

Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at efreeman_ysports@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @FreemanEric