Unlike Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki, Jamal Crawford has come out and said that he doesn’t want to retire. He wants to keep playing. Now, he’s not on the same tier as those other two guys, but he’s on some sort of tier, the tier you get assigned to when you play 20 years in the NBA despite being only a chucker for that entire time. I don’t know who else gets to be on that tier. It’s possible he’s on a tier by himself. The “immortal chucker” tier.
But it’s not clear that Crawford will have any say in the matter. It’s very possible that he’ll be subjected to what I call INVOLUNTARY RETIREMENT, which is what happens when you’re an old role-player and teams just sorta stop giving you contracts. Then you sit around as a free agent for a few years before putting out something saying like “I announce that I’m retiring from the NBA” and everyone is like “hasn’t this dude been retired for like five years now?”. That’s what is going to happen with Crawford. If not this year, then next year for sure.
It’s possible that this performance alone earns him another contract. 28 points is a lot of points, even he shooted a lot of shooty shoots to do it. And don’t think about pointing to his assists as evidence of him having a good passing game; it’s easy to get dimes when Josh Jackson is making everything. But those 28 points, and they way they were scored (swaggy pullup action in this video if you want to get spoilered) might entice one of the dumber GM’s (thinking Lakers here) to give him another deal.
If not, well, it’s been a good career. Would’ve liked to see him score 20,000 points, because that’s almost a guaranteed ticket to the hall, but still. A nice career filled with tons of really stupid three-pointers and maybe a full game of combined defensive effort.