Jae Crowder happy to finally be out of Phoenix, ready for season debut with Bucks: 'It's behind me now'
Jae Crowder doesn’t want to get into details of what happened during his final months with the Phoenix Suns.
But as he was sitting at home for the first half of this season, watching his teammates and everyone else around the league playing while he wasn’t, he was getting mad.
“I’d get frustrated because I’d know I was supposed to be in those situations at some point now, and I’m three or four months of not being in those situations,” he said Monday via The Associated Press.
Now that’s about to change.
Crowder is set to make his season debut with the Milwaukee Bucks, who landed him in a deal with the Brooklyn Nets, who acquired Crowder from Phoenix right before the trade deadline. He’ll officially make his debut sometime after the All-Star break.
Crowder and the Suns announced before the season started that he wouldn’t be joining the team in what was a mutual decision. It took until the trade deadline for the Suns to find a deal to move Crowder, something he wasn’t happy about.
But at least now, he said, it’s in the past.
"I just feel like it's behind me now," Crowder said via The Associated Press. "We had some stuff happen internally that they asked me to keep inside, so I'm going to grant their wishes. Obviously I've been working with these guys for a trade partner for months now. I think give or take, they did exactly what they said they was going to do. Took longer than what we all expected, but it got done."
Crowder averaged 9.4 points and 5.3 rebounds last season with the Suns, his second with the franchise. The Bucks are the eighth team for the 32-year-old in his 11-year career in the league, which started after the Dallas Mavericks selected him with the No. 34 overall pick in the 2012 draft. He has reached the NBA Finals twice, first with the Miami Heat in 2020 and again with the Suns the following year, but has never won a title.
Now with the Bucks, he’s in good position to reach his third Finals in four seasons. Milwaukee has won 10 straight games heading into Tuesday’s battle with the first-place Boston Celtics, whom the Bucks trail by 1.5 games for first in the Eastern Conference.
"He does whatever it takes 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's got kind of a toughness on the offensive end, sets screens. He understands spacing, understands timing. He's won a ton."
