Gee only appeared in 15 games for the Blazers, with most of those minutes coming in garbage time, so it’s all but impossible to look at his short time in Portland and come to any kind of conclusion on what kind of a player he is or whether he has a future with the Trail Blazers. When he was acquired, along with Arron Afflalo, from the Denver Nuggets midway through the season, the idea was that he would give the Blazers an athletic, defensive-minded player off the bench, though he was never able to really crack the rotation.
By Casey Holdahl - That wasn’t the case for second year wing Allen Crabbe, at least during the first half of the season. Though he barely played in the first seven games, he appeared in 25 straight games after that, eventually averaging 17.0 minutes per game in November and 14.7 per in December. But a knee strain that was only supposed to keep the 6-6 wing out for a few games must have been worse than originally thought, as he played just 36 minutes combined in the next 32 games. He got back into the rotation as other injuries ravaged Portland’s roster, but even those minutes mostly came at the end of blowouts or in meaningless games.
Though that wasn’t the case at the end of the season. Crabbe averaged almost 20 minutes per in the final month of the regular season and started in Game 2 of Portland’s first round playoff series versus the Memphis Grizzlies. But in the end, his season ended the same way it started: with a string of DNPs. After playing in Game 1 and Game 2, Crabbe sat out the final three games of Portland’s short playoff run thanks to Afflalo returning from injury and CJ McCollum playing some of the best basketball of his professional career.
Nevertheless, after seeing the court in just 15 games during his rookie season, averaging 13.4 minutes in 51 appearances during his second season was progress in the right direction.