Allen or A.C.? Will Crabbe continue his dominance?

His teammates have two nicknames for Allen Crabbe. The passive Crabbe, they call “Allen,” but the aggressive Crabbe is “A.C.” and in that Jekyll-and- Hyde metaphor, A.C. is suddenly dominant.

What’s gotten Into Allen Crabbe lately? In the four games leading up to the All-Star Break, he’s been averaging 25.3 points while shooting over 50% from the floor & just under 43% from deep. In the previous four games, the numbers were 9.7 points, 35 and 32.

So what happened? He became more aggressive. He took 75 shots from deep in the last four games, compared to 43 in the previous four.

Here’s our breakdown of the new and improved Crabbe, aka A.C...

Now, the big question is, Can he keep it up? A look at his career shows this stretch is by far the best of his career. A year ago, he shot better than 50 percent from deep in a four-game set, averaging 18 a game. Two years ago, he had nice run of seven games, averaging 15, but he took only 30 shots in those seven games, making 43 percent of them.

Dave Deckard of Blazers Edge, NetsDaily’s sister site in Portland thinks Nets fans will ultimately be disappointed. Writing Thursday, after the final game of Crabbe’s recent run, Deckard encapsulated a lot of what Blazer fans think of their former shooting guard...

When the Portland Trail Blazers traded Allen Crabbe to the Brooklyn Nets in July of 2017, Blazers fans knew they’d be losing a young three-point shooter with defensive potential, gaining nothing but relief from his burgeoning, $19 million contract. They also knew they would no longer be subject to Crabbe’s chronic bouts of inconsistency, scoring 30 and then disappearing for the next four games. Gambling on potential and the occasional big payout would now be the problem of the Nets.

The Nets brain trust, of course, has great faith in Crabbe, tendering him a $75 million offer sheet in 2016,then trading for him and the $58.3 million left on his contract in 2017. They think he may very well have turned the corner, become A.C. finally.