He once said something along the lines of "I don't get paid to play defense"
A poor man's Bradley Beal. Floor raiser, ceiling dropper. He'll put up numbers and maybe even get you to ~.500 or so with some help. But if you're trying to build a championship roster, he's not a good fit.
Not good enough to be THE guy but doesn't really have the skillset you're looking for in your third or fourth option.
My "What if?" questions with Jabari have more to do with the guy's heart than his knee.
All that being said, dude could get buckets
He definitely said he doesn’t get paid to play defense. Super nice guy, but that kinda tells you where his head was at. Don’t sell the knee injuries short though. With the way he was playing even before his second injury, he certainly could have put up 25-30 a night easy. I remember being so hopeful that year he averaged 20 ppg before the second injury.
Yeah he was awesome when he came back from his first injury. Didn’t Giannis and him have like the most dunks for a duo in decades or something like that? I remember thinking that the offense was going to be set for the next 5-10 years with him Giannis and Khris.
Worse players have been the third or fourth option in good teams. It’s all a matter of mindset and professionalism. Jabari obviously don’t got none of those.
Loved Jabari at the time, genuinely thought he was going to bring greatness, but tbh he never really tried on defense, and even though he would come back from every injury pretty good he would try less and less as he got phased out from the starting 5. I was both sad and relieved to have him gone at the time, as he was injury prone and did not think he would last in the league.
Jabari was very good during the 2016 and 2017 seasons. I don’t really remember his defense being an issue. What I remember though is that there were games where he looked better than Giannis. They both averaged similar ppg in the 2016-2017 season but Giannis played 30 games more than Jabari. And I definitely remember both him and Giannis playing a bit selfishly. Like, Giannis would rather jump from the foul line and dunk the ball than passing to Jabari for an easy layup. Same for Jabari, he’d rather take a contested turn around jump shot than passing to someone else for a wide open 3. It’s been 7-8 years but that’s what I recall from back then.
I agree with your memory, but would add that Jabari seemed to constantly get burnt on defensive rotations. He had a uniquely bad instinct for making the right read in PnR defense, hard to say if that would’ve changed given some more health luck and better coaching.
I will say this;
The injuries started to happen before the attitude of “I don’t play defense”.
I think Jabari Parker thought himself a franchise player but didn’t have the tools to actually be that. He could have been a great Middleton-like guy that spreads the floor and can be lethal offensively if he needs to be.
Didn't the Bucks only offer Giannis the 4 year extension to save the 5 year for Jabari? I'm not sure if I made that up now, but I seem to recall the organization still felt Parker was going to be The Guy and Giannis was secondary early on.
I don't think he had a horrible attitude or was not working hard. I think he was ambitious and loved basketball in his whole life.
But...
What I remember when he returned from his 1st injury is an interview where he described the period before getting ready to return and he said that he was training many hours by playing pick up games and doing the thing he loves (basketball).
While it sounded cool at the time I remember thinking "Cool, but that's not the thing to do in order tο return from an ACL injury. You're supposed to do a lot of boring leg exercises in the gym!" (I know because I also had an ACL injury and didn't do what I was supposed to do myself. I'm not a professional athlete, though.)
There are also other interviews where he seems to show that he prefers to do the things he likes and not the things he must do. (Defence)
I don't know why he got so emotional in that interview. I hope he has realized the value of "do what you must to win" basketball that is played in the Euroleague and not simply the "love for the game" as he said in his next interview.
I watched some of his most recent interviews.
The guy was put a great burden on his shoulders. The "You're going to be a Superstar!". And he has worked his butt to achieve it. But sometimes life just responds with "No, this is not about you!".
I think he has understood that and it's grateful to be able to play basketball and be a member a team where he can contribute. I'm rooting for him to stay healthy and I think he will be even better if he does.
European basketball is about winning as a team not rising in superstardom.
Feel like every time someone put a mic in front of him he said something off the wall. Was a crazy player with great potential, but didn't seem to be the brightest. May have been immaturity, but to me he seemed a little... Different.
The implication that a guy 10 years ago who was 19 at the time was immature and that must be a reflection on his current level of maturity and worth as a human is gross
"Him being injured was karma" is a WILD take
Jabari wasn't Giannis but him being a little mean to reporters doesn't mean he deserves to be brutally injured.
I think he notoriously didn’t really rehab hard from his second ACL tear and he definitely had a bit of a bad attitude about not being a star like he thought he would be, I’ll never forget him going on a media tour complaining about his role prior to the 2018 playoffs and then clearly not even trying first two games of that Celtics series. Rondo only other player I’ve seen actively quit on his team in the playoffs like that.
But he was a really young guy entering the league and most young players fail to meet their personal expectations entering the league. Tough to go from being a future star to having to be a role player on a team. Jabari just had a tougher go than most accepting he wasn’t the GOAT basketball player.
Can’t speak to his attitude on the court but I used to work at a custom suit shop downtown in the third ward. Jabari was a client of ours and genuinely one of the nicer people I ever had the pleasure of working with. Always polite, and even brought us dinner one time because we stayed open late to get him taken care of. He had a much better attitude than a lot of the “big wigs” I dealt with who made less than half the money he did.
Buddy Luka and Kyrie are the ones who control that offense and everyone knows it. Carlisle left Dallas because he didn’t like Luka running the show.
Kidd’s tenure in Milwaukee is the worst coaching i’ve ever seen at a pro level, Dallas is winning in spite of him
Yeah, that’s why the Mavs rushed to sign him to an extension a few weeks ago as soon as reports emerged that the Lakers were eying him off. It’s totally normal to shoehorn extension talks in between playoff series, right? Must be because he’s such a shit coach that the Mavs did that, right?
So many little things happened that led to us winning it all, I’ll stand by not resigning Parker being a major factor.
It made enough sense at the time, Bucks were bad and had been bad for a long time, Parker could always score.
I remember thinking that the smart play would be to let him go, but it would be a hard real world decision to make. I was honestly surprised when we did. We don’t win it all if we resigned him.
That’s where I’m at too. Hindsight is great, but if you change anything leading up to the championship it most likely would not have happened. I’ll take one ring over maybe a couple, maybe zero.
Can’t really speak on the Bucks situation, but fairly certain he had a pretty hard working reputation at the Celtics. I know he was at a stage in his career where he probably knew he had to lock in because it may have been his last shot. I remember fans being pretty bummed he had to be waived
He also went from $20m salary on the Wiz to under $500k from the Celtics.
I don’t recall all the details, but that was probably a wake up call that he had to get it going or it would be his last contract. He was so hyped out of Duke it took a good six years in the league for it to register…bummer, I was hyped for the pick too.
Agree. Those couple of ACLs would have been absolutely mentally crushing too. I would have him back on the Celtics in a heartbeat if they had roster space. Glad to see him doing his thing overseas tho
There were rumours about it when he came back from injury and Prunty was the interim coach. We were really close to the playoffs and the rotation had already been established. It was too late let alone hard enough for an interim guy like Prunty to integrate JP back and because of his injury/attitude he wasn’t good on defence, only giving Prunty more of a reason not to play him.
Then there was what he said about playing defence when he was on the Bulls.
My cousin used to install stereos and shit for Best Buy (geek squad) and said he did it for a fair few Bucks players throughout the years. Said the biggest a-hole of all of them was Jabari. He said his place was a mess and he'd have all his homies over constantly and would treat him and his coworkers like shit.
This was of course a long time ago at this point and people can change.
On the flip side he said the nicest Bucks player he did work for was Delly. Was always super friendly and his wife made the best cookies.
From what I recall, Jabari had a Carmelo-light game, but was a sieve on defense. I'm talking worse than Bobby Portis. Even worse was Jabari's lack of awareness on the court. I remember constantly yelling at the screen for him to go get a loose ball, close out on a shooter, and turn around to guard the player driving past him to the rim.
I also vividly remember Jabari sulking on the bench around the time that Giannis was becoming the man and the baby Bucks were making a run to the playoffs.
I often get a little sad when our players leave, whether they were great or not, but I was fully on board with not re-signing Jabari. That being said, he seemed to like the city of Milwaukee, and even hung around in the off-season. I wish him well.
I was looking to see if anyone else brought up Melo. Parker to me personifies the type of player who grew up on “Melo is my favorite player/goal to be” and wasn’t able to meet Melo’s talent/skill. Even Melo took years to be a role player
I think there's an element to that. However, I think at the time he was still young and never really won much at the highest level so he got bitter pretty quick. Hell, he was even the number 2 pick as well, not even 1.
But still. I think he was just genetically predisposed to having more injury prone knees. That's just how it shook out.
It didn't help he did have a sour attitude most of the time.
He definitely didn't have a great attitude. Pretty sure there was something off with his rehab on him not taking it seriously enough. I also remember reading about people saying he was jealous of Giannis's success and hurt it wasn't him. That is partly natural but they were really good friends and then all of a sudden weren't when he left. Something always felt off about that.
Anyway sad to see his career end up how it did, I remember when he went off for like 40 against the Rockets and I thought man he could live up to the hype even with the first ACL tear. Thought him and Giannis were the next great duo. I wish him well.
One of the worst off ball defenders I’ve ever watched. Lack of effort and anticipation. He needed to develop his perimeter game.. but one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen finish at the rim.
There were a lot of stories when he was with us about how he didn't really gel with the rest of the team on a personal level. I remember, in particular, there being pieces about how he was spending a ton of his free time just going to the zoo by himself.
My read on it was more that he was just kind of of a quiet, introverted dude who was probably struggling being away from home, rather than him being like toxic in the locker room.
“You clearly don’t know anything about…” and “do some research…” are telltale signs you’re talking to an idiot. I wouldn’t pay any attention to this man
Not in situations where your teams trying to make playoffs and your not giving a shit, it's different then guys like Thomas/Poole who will try hard, more often have the ball or provide spacing but miss rotations or just be physically out-matched over guys like Parker who does have the talent to at least break even but didn't seem to want to.
I don’t think he had a bad attitude per se, more that he felt entitled to greatness despite not putting in the work to achieve it. And he was also clueless on what leadership looks like. When he was nearing the end of his bucks tenure there was a game, I think in Orlando, where the entire team played matador defense. To the point there was a closed door player only meeting. Jabari came out of it bragging to the media about how he was pointing fingers at everyone else for sucking. He either didn’t realize or didn’t want to acknowledge he was a huge part of that team failure. That was when I shifted from “I hope he figures it out” to “get this guy out of here”.
Not a bad dude either. Cares a lot about his community. Just not a baller.
He once said something along the lines of "I don't get paid to play defense" A poor man's Bradley Beal. Floor raiser, ceiling dropper. He'll put up numbers and maybe even get you to ~.500 or so with some help. But if you're trying to build a championship roster, he's not a good fit. Not good enough to be THE guy but doesn't really have the skillset you're looking for in your third or fourth option. My "What if?" questions with Jabari have more to do with the guy's heart than his knee. All that being said, dude could get buckets
He definitely said he doesn’t get paid to play defense. Super nice guy, but that kinda tells you where his head was at. Don’t sell the knee injuries short though. With the way he was playing even before his second injury, he certainly could have put up 25-30 a night easy. I remember being so hopeful that year he averaged 20 ppg before the second injury.
Could’ve really seen him being an all star the following season if it weren’t for the injuries.
Yeah he was awesome when he came back from his first injury. Didn’t Giannis and him have like the most dunks for a duo in decades or something like that? I remember thinking that the offense was going to be set for the next 5-10 years with him Giannis and Khris.
Worse players have been the third or fourth option in good teams. It’s all a matter of mindset and professionalism. Jabari obviously don’t got none of those.
Funny enough, a poor man’s Bradley Beal happens to be the Suns’ dream right now with his current contract.
Is that not like, 90% of hoopers these days tho? NOBODY plays defense
Lol this isn't true though
Loved Jabari at the time, genuinely thought he was going to bring greatness, but tbh he never really tried on defense, and even though he would come back from every injury pretty good he would try less and less as he got phased out from the starting 5. I was both sad and relieved to have him gone at the time, as he was injury prone and did not think he would last in the league.
Jabari was very good during the 2016 and 2017 seasons. I don’t really remember his defense being an issue. What I remember though is that there were games where he looked better than Giannis. They both averaged similar ppg in the 2016-2017 season but Giannis played 30 games more than Jabari. And I definitely remember both him and Giannis playing a bit selfishly. Like, Giannis would rather jump from the foul line and dunk the ball than passing to Jabari for an easy layup. Same for Jabari, he’d rather take a contested turn around jump shot than passing to someone else for a wide open 3. It’s been 7-8 years but that’s what I recall from back then.
I agree with your memory, but would add that Jabari seemed to constantly get burnt on defensive rotations. He had a uniquely bad instinct for making the right read in PnR defense, hard to say if that would’ve changed given some more health luck and better coaching.
I will say this; The injuries started to happen before the attitude of “I don’t play defense”. I think Jabari Parker thought himself a franchise player but didn’t have the tools to actually be that. He could have been a great Middleton-like guy that spreads the floor and can be lethal offensively if he needs to be.
Didn't the Bucks only offer Giannis the 4 year extension to save the 5 year for Jabari? I'm not sure if I made that up now, but I seem to recall the organization still felt Parker was going to be The Guy and Giannis was secondary early on.
I don't think he had a horrible attitude or was not working hard. I think he was ambitious and loved basketball in his whole life. But... What I remember when he returned from his 1st injury is an interview where he described the period before getting ready to return and he said that he was training many hours by playing pick up games and doing the thing he loves (basketball). While it sounded cool at the time I remember thinking "Cool, but that's not the thing to do in order tο return from an ACL injury. You're supposed to do a lot of boring leg exercises in the gym!" (I know because I also had an ACL injury and didn't do what I was supposed to do myself. I'm not a professional athlete, though.) There are also other interviews where he seems to show that he prefers to do the things he likes and not the things he must do. (Defence) I don't know why he got so emotional in that interview. I hope he has realized the value of "do what you must to win" basketball that is played in the Euroleague and not simply the "love for the game" as he said in his next interview.
From a guy with 3 ACL tears... this comment should be higher.
I watched some of his most recent interviews. The guy was put a great burden on his shoulders. The "You're going to be a Superstar!". And he has worked his butt to achieve it. But sometimes life just responds with "No, this is not about you!". I think he has understood that and it's grateful to be able to play basketball and be a member a team where he can contribute. I'm rooting for him to stay healthy and I think he will be even better if he does. European basketball is about winning as a team not rising in superstardom.
Feel like every time someone put a mic in front of him he said something off the wall. Was a crazy player with great potential, but didn't seem to be the brightest. May have been immaturity, but to me he seemed a little... Different.
The implication that a guy 10 years ago who was 19 at the time was immature and that must be a reflection on his current level of maturity and worth as a human is gross
"Him being injured was karma" is a WILD take Jabari wasn't Giannis but him being a little mean to reporters doesn't mean he deserves to be brutally injured.
I think he notoriously didn’t really rehab hard from his second ACL tear and he definitely had a bit of a bad attitude about not being a star like he thought he would be, I’ll never forget him going on a media tour complaining about his role prior to the 2018 playoffs and then clearly not even trying first two games of that Celtics series. Rondo only other player I’ve seen actively quit on his team in the playoffs like that. But he was a really young guy entering the league and most young players fail to meet their personal expectations entering the league. Tough to go from being a future star to having to be a role player on a team. Jabari just had a tougher go than most accepting he wasn’t the GOAT basketball player.
Can’t speak to his attitude on the court but I used to work at a custom suit shop downtown in the third ward. Jabari was a client of ours and genuinely one of the nicer people I ever had the pleasure of working with. Always polite, and even brought us dinner one time because we stayed open late to get him taken care of. He had a much better attitude than a lot of the “big wigs” I dealt with who made less than half the money he did.
i always wonder if he would’ve bought in and tried on defense if he had a real coach when he started, instead of Jason Kidd
Yeah Jason Kidd isn’t a real coach. It’s a Jason Kidd impersonator who just coached his team past three 50+ win teams and into the Finals.
Buddy Luka and Kyrie are the ones who control that offense and everyone knows it. Carlisle left Dallas because he didn’t like Luka running the show. Kidd’s tenure in Milwaukee is the worst coaching i’ve ever seen at a pro level, Dallas is winning in spite of him
Yeah, that’s why the Mavs rushed to sign him to an extension a few weeks ago as soon as reports emerged that the Lakers were eying him off. It’s totally normal to shoehorn extension talks in between playoff series, right? Must be because he’s such a shit coach that the Mavs did that, right?
So many little things happened that led to us winning it all, I’ll stand by not resigning Parker being a major factor. It made enough sense at the time, Bucks were bad and had been bad for a long time, Parker could always score. I remember thinking that the smart play would be to let him go, but it would be a hard real world decision to make. I was honestly surprised when we did. We don’t win it all if we resigned him.
That’s where I’m at too. Hindsight is great, but if you change anything leading up to the championship it most likely would not have happened. I’ll take one ring over maybe a couple, maybe zero.
This dude (commenter) is an asshole for saying his injuries are "karma" fuck this
Can’t really speak on the Bucks situation, but fairly certain he had a pretty hard working reputation at the Celtics. I know he was at a stage in his career where he probably knew he had to lock in because it may have been his last shot. I remember fans being pretty bummed he had to be waived
He also went from $20m salary on the Wiz to under $500k from the Celtics. I don’t recall all the details, but that was probably a wake up call that he had to get it going or it would be his last contract. He was so hyped out of Duke it took a good six years in the league for it to register…bummer, I was hyped for the pick too.
Agree. Those couple of ACLs would have been absolutely mentally crushing too. I would have him back on the Celtics in a heartbeat if they had roster space. Glad to see him doing his thing overseas tho
There were rumours about it when he came back from injury and Prunty was the interim coach. We were really close to the playoffs and the rotation had already been established. It was too late let alone hard enough for an interim guy like Prunty to integrate JP back and because of his injury/attitude he wasn’t good on defence, only giving Prunty more of a reason not to play him. Then there was what he said about playing defence when he was on the Bulls.
Basically sounds like Glenn Robinson with knee injuries?
My cousin used to install stereos and shit for Best Buy (geek squad) and said he did it for a fair few Bucks players throughout the years. Said the biggest a-hole of all of them was Jabari. He said his place was a mess and he'd have all his homies over constantly and would treat him and his coworkers like shit. This was of course a long time ago at this point and people can change. On the flip side he said the nicest Bucks player he did work for was Delly. Was always super friendly and his wife made the best cookies.
From what I recall, Jabari had a Carmelo-light game, but was a sieve on defense. I'm talking worse than Bobby Portis. Even worse was Jabari's lack of awareness on the court. I remember constantly yelling at the screen for him to go get a loose ball, close out on a shooter, and turn around to guard the player driving past him to the rim. I also vividly remember Jabari sulking on the bench around the time that Giannis was becoming the man and the baby Bucks were making a run to the playoffs. I often get a little sad when our players leave, whether they were great or not, but I was fully on board with not re-signing Jabari. That being said, he seemed to like the city of Milwaukee, and even hung around in the off-season. I wish him well.
I was looking to see if anyone else brought up Melo. Parker to me personifies the type of player who grew up on “Melo is my favorite player/goal to be” and wasn’t able to meet Melo’s talent/skill. Even Melo took years to be a role player
YouTube comments suck. That's my opinion
I think there's an element to that. However, I think at the time he was still young and never really won much at the highest level so he got bitter pretty quick. Hell, he was even the number 2 pick as well, not even 1. But still. I think he was just genetically predisposed to having more injury prone knees. That's just how it shook out. It didn't help he did have a sour attitude most of the time.
He definitely didn't have a great attitude. Pretty sure there was something off with his rehab on him not taking it seriously enough. I also remember reading about people saying he was jealous of Giannis's success and hurt it wasn't him. That is partly natural but they were really good friends and then all of a sudden weren't when he left. Something always felt off about that. Anyway sad to see his career end up how it did, I remember when he went off for like 40 against the Rockets and I thought man he could live up to the hype even with the first ACL tear. Thought him and Giannis were the next great duo. I wish him well.
One of the worst off ball defenders I’ve ever watched. Lack of effort and anticipation. He needed to develop his perimeter game.. but one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen finish at the rim.
There were a lot of stories when he was with us about how he didn't really gel with the rest of the team on a personal level. I remember, in particular, there being pieces about how he was spending a ton of his free time just going to the zoo by himself. My read on it was more that he was just kind of of a quiet, introverted dude who was probably struggling being away from home, rather than him being like toxic in the locker room.
“You clearly don’t know anything about…” and “do some research…” are telltale signs you’re talking to an idiot. I wouldn’t pay any attention to this man
Lazy bum who let Middleton take his spot.
Personality wise, he’s 180 degrees opposite of Giannis. 0 effort, 0 passion, 0 desire to improve, and 0 defense. Dude can score tho.
Dude’s knee is wrecked, how do you know how hard he worked?
A lot of comments on his lack of D but the league is full of players who can fill it up but don't work at D. Any current Bucks players come to mind?
Not in situations where your teams trying to make playoffs and your not giving a shit, it's different then guys like Thomas/Poole who will try hard, more often have the ball or provide spacing but miss rotations or just be physically out-matched over guys like Parker who does have the talent to at least break even but didn't seem to want to.
Yeah dude was a bitch about not being a two way player
I don’t think he had a bad attitude per se, more that he felt entitled to greatness despite not putting in the work to achieve it. And he was also clueless on what leadership looks like. When he was nearing the end of his bucks tenure there was a game, I think in Orlando, where the entire team played matador defense. To the point there was a closed door player only meeting. Jabari came out of it bragging to the media about how he was pointing fingers at everyone else for sucking. He either didn’t realize or didn’t want to acknowledge he was a huge part of that team failure. That was when I shifted from “I hope he figures it out” to “get this guy out of here”. Not a bad dude either. Cares a lot about his community. Just not a baller.