Seattle-guy switch in Rip City: Crawford for Roy

Former Rainier Beach star Jamal Crawford announced Thuesday on his Twitter account that he will be joining the Portland Trail Blazers instead of the Sacramento Kings, as some reports had suggested. A man of disciplined verbal economy, Crawford used only 10 of his allotted 140 characters to inform the Twitterverse of this development, simply typing, “Rip city!!!.” (he should have capitalized the “c” in city.)

Since Crawford, who played briefly at Michigan after leaving Rainier Beach, has already been employed by four NBA teams since the 2000-01 season — Bulls, Knicks, Warriors and Hawks — his decision to sign with a new club comes as scant surprise.

In order to make a deal with Crawford, the Blazers used the NBA’s new amnesty clause to waive All-Star guard Brandon Roy, who announced his retirement last week because of knee problems.

An 11-year veteran, Crawford played for the Atlanta Hawks the past two seasons. For his career, Crawford has averaged 15.2 points, 2.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists. He won the league’s Sixth Man award in 2010. His new deal in Portland is for two years.

A three-time All-Star, Roy was guranteed to make $15 million this season, but the lack of cartilage between the bones in his knees forced the former University of Washington All-America by way of Garfield High out of the game. Roy has yet to disclose his future plans, but Portland’s acting general manager, Chad Buchanan, said Roy will always have a place with the Blazers.

“If there’s any role that he wanted to take on moving forward, we would love to have him in any capacity,” Buchanan said. “There’s always going to be a place for Brandon in this organization. And at some point he’ll probably consider and look into all of his options and what he wants to do now that he’s done playing. We just want to make sure that he knows he always has a home with us.”

That Crawford would take Roy’s roster spot is ironic in the sense that the pair are the only Washington state natives ever to score 50 or more points in an NBA game. Crawford has had three such contests, the last on Dec. 20, 2008, for Golden State against Charlotte.

Roy produced his 50-point game just two days before Crawford’s last 50-point spree, knocking down 52 against the Phoenix Suns on Dec. 18, 2008.

Among state of Washington natives, or players with significant ties to the state (such as Detlef Schrempf) no one had a greater statistical impact during his time in the NBA than Roy, who averaged 19.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.7 assists. Deduct his 1.9 turnovers, and Roy’s combined career points-rebounds-assists average is 26.1. How that compares: