Brooklyn Nets rumors: Allen Crabbe opts in for 2019-20

In the one of the least surprising Brooklyn Nets rumors ever, there are reports that wing Allen Crabbe has exercised his $18.5 million option for 2019-20.

Score one for the blatantly obvious. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN is reporting Friday morning that Brooklyn Nets guard Allen Crabbe has exercised his $18.5 million option for next season.

This may be the least surprising development for the Nets this offseason.

Brooklyn Nets guard Allen Crabbe has exercised his $18.5M player option for the 2019-20 season, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 3, 2019

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Crabbe, coming off an injury-plagued 2018-19 season, put up the worst numbers he’s posted since becoming a rotation player full time in 2015-16 with the Portland Trail Blazers and free agency wasn’t going to yield anywhere near the $18.5 million bag he will get next season.

Crabbe was slowed early in the season by a preseason ankle injury — the second straight season he’s endured that fate — but was rounding into form in mid-December before bruising his right knee after a fall in a game against the Philadelphia 76ers on Dec. 12.

He missed 26 games with the injury before returning shortly before the All-Star break in early February.

But Crabbe only played in 15 more games before he was sidelined again with more pain in the knee in mid-March and wound up being shut down for the season, undergoing arthroscopic surgery on April 4.

Crabbe was one of two restricted free agents signed to offer sheets by Nets general manager Sean Marks in the summer of 2016, with Crabbe signing what turned into a four-year, $75 million deal with a player option for the final season when the Trail Blazers opted to match.

In addition to Crabbe’s offer sheet, the Nets also signed Chris Johnson to a backloaded four-year, $50 million offer (with a $19.25 million player option for 2019-20) that the Miami Heat wound up matching. Johnson was traded to the Phoenix Suns on Feb. 6.

In 2017, the Nets inked Otto Porter to a four-year, $106.5 million deal that was three years plus a player option, an offer that was matched by the Washington Wizards. Porter was acquired by the Chicago Bulls in a Feb. 6 trade.

For as bad as the Crabbe contract has turned out to be for the Nets, the player sent to Portland in July 2017 to get Crabbe may have been a worse financial albatross.

Andrew Nicholson had signed a four-year, $26 million free-agent deal with the Wizards in 2016 … then averaged 2.6 points and 1.6 rebounds per game in the first year of that deal before Portland bought out the final three years after getting him from Brooklyn.

The Trail Blazers will be eating nearly $3 million a year in dead salary cap space through the 2023-24 season.

Now the focus will likely turn to offloading Crabbe’s expiring deal in order to free up a large chunk of cap space for this summer’s free-agency bonanza.

The Nets may have to give up a sweetener to get a deal done — Brooklyn has its own first-round pick at No. 17 this year, along with the Denver Nuggets’ first-rounder at No. 27 overall and the New York Knicks’ second-round pick at No. 31.

The player option is the sharpest of the double-edged swords teams can box themselves into.

Either the player performs well and opts out, leaving the club without a key asset, or the player underperforms and the player opts in, swallowing up large chunks of cap space that could be used on someone more productive.

Crabbe turned his ankle in the Nets’ third preseason game against the Detroit Pistons and never got his starting job back from Joe Harris.

He did make 20 starts while Caris LeVert was out with a dislocated foot and played in 43 games overall, averaging 9.6 points and 3.4 rebounds in 26.3 minutes per game on 36.7 percent shooting overall and hit 37.8 percent on 6.0 3-point attempts per game.

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That was down from the 13.2 points and 40.7 percent shooting Crabbe posted in his first season in Brooklyn, though he hit an identical 37.8 percent on 7.1 deep attempts a night in 2017-18.

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