Brooklyn Nets: 5 biggest offseason questions

5. Do the Nets find a taker for Crabbe’s expiring deal?

Allen Crabbe had a rough second season with the Brooklyn Nets in 2018-19, slowed at the start by a lingering ankle injury — for the second straight season — and ended prematurely by a knee injury that eventually required arthroscopic surgery in late March.

In between, Crabbe had an uneven run through the 43 games in which he played.

Crabbe has a player option for the final year of the four-year, $75 million contract he signed with the Portland Trail Blazers in 2016, a deal based upon the offer sheet he signed with the Nets as a restricted free agent.

His option for next year is $18.5 million and from the outside looking in, Crabbe exercising that option seems extremely likely — he’ll not get anywhere close to that figure as a free agent coming off an injury-shortened season during which he shot 36.7 percent from the field.

But even with that, Crabbe did finish the season shooting 37.8 percent from 3-point range — the exact figure he posted in 2017-18 when he set franchise single-season records for makes (201) and attempts (532). Both those records fell to D’Angelo Russell this season.

He started only 20 of the 43 games in which he played, with his minutes falling from 29.3 to 26.3 per game. His averages fell proportionally — from 13.2 to 9.6 points per game and from 4.3 to 3.4 rebounds a night.

His utter ineffectiveness inside the 3-point line was a surprise, and not a good one. Crabbe hit just 34.2 percent of those shots, down from 46.1 percent in 2017-18 and well off the 48.5 percent he shot over his first five NBA seasons.

An 85 percent free throw shooter in his first five years, Crabbe fell off drastically to 73.2 percent this season, an indication that either his leg injuries altered his shooting stroke or something else broke down with his shot.

The Nets put together a roster over the first three years under general manager Sean Marks that included bringing on guys on bloated contracts while getting sweeteners.

Denver’s first-round pick came as the reward for taking on Kenneth Faried and Darrell Arthur last summer, the picks the yielded Dzanan Musa and Rodions Kurucs in the 2018 NBA Draft were attached to the trade for DeMarre Carroll and, of course, Russell came to Brooklyn along with the gigantically oversized deal of Timofey Mozgov.

The Nets nearly had a taker for Crabbe at the trade deadline in February, but a potential deal to send Crabbe and Denver’s first-rounder to the Memphis Grizzlies didn’t make it to the finish line.

With Crabbe’s deal becoming an expiring contract, perhaps Brooklyn can find a taker if Marks is willing to give up one of his picks to make it happen. That would free up some cap space for the pursuit of free agents and to keep the ones he already has.