To say that Utah Jazz forward Jae Crowder is coming off a down year is putting it lightly. In August of 2017, he was unexpectedly traded by the Boston Celtics — with whom he’d reached new heights as an NBA player — to the Cleveland Cavaliers. That same night, his mother died of cancer at the age of 51.
By February of this year, he had fallen out of favor in Cleveland and was getting shipped off once again, this time to the Utah Jazz. And while a few of the clouds may have begun to part at that point, Crowder is aiming for a clean slate heading into the Jazz’s 2018-19 campaign.