Dumb Luck

by Amos Barshad The Contract-Year Signing is a well-established phenomena: a chronically underachieving player puts the pieces together in the last year of his deal and, conveniently enough, his boosted numbers are enough for a desperate team to throw way too much money at him. The player then goes right back to underachieving. But there’s another, rarer NBA phenomenon by which mediocre players sucker unsuspecting teams into albatross contracts: a previously anonymous player plays just enough above his previously exhibited abilities during a crucial Playoff stretch—at which point, recall, passions run high and team execs can fall in love as easily as fans—and lands a ridiculously oversized contract; he then goes right back to his previous lows. We’re going to call it The Brief-And-Due-to-Sample-Size-Irrelevant-Flash-of-Brilliance-Coming-at-Just-the-Right-Time Signing (title’s still in beta.) And the worst offenders are… Austin Croshere Croshere was a third-year bench player st...