https://youtu.be/hnXKCgnIaKM
Jae Crowder scored 26 points in the first half of this game and then didn’t even end up scoring thirty, a feat he’s only done once in his career. If there are any hardcore Crowder fans out there, they got severely blue-balled by this sizzling-hot shooting display which inexplicably died at halftime. I rather doubt that such a thing as a “hardcore Crowder fan” actually exists, but if you’re out there, first of all, congratulations for getting to watch your favorite player play the best twenty minutes of basketball they’ve ever played, and, second of all, I’m sorry that the hype you accumulated from that experience was ultimately unfulfilled.
Eight three pointers in a half sounds like it could be a league-wide single-season record, but it probably isn’t, not in a league with Steph Curry still in it. However, it is significantly more likely to be a record if you limit the eligible players to non-stars. Lots of role-players are great at shooting threes, but not a lot of them get enough attempts to make eight in a single half. Most would be overjoyed to make eight in a single game. Sadly, the analytical service Stathead (to whom I give significant amounts of money in exchange for forbidden statistical secrets) does not have a “role-player” filter, and, as far as I know, there’s no way to limit queries to a single half of play, so I’ll only ever be able to speculate on this record. Unless I scrape their database for a list of every shot made in the NBA this season and run my own numbers using janky Python scripts. But that’s against their TOS and I don’t want to lose out on access to the service, especially since I paid REAL AMERICAN DOLLARS for that access.
It’s worth noting that the Heat made a surprise run to the Finals last season, in no small part due to Crowder’s solid presence on the roster. Now the Suns with Crowder are making a surprise run for a top seed in the West. Does Crowder instantly turn teams into contenders? Is that really the pattern I’m seeing here?