Like many rookies, Bustbari Porker has struggled out of the starting gate this season. To further the horse racing metaphor, he isn’t being whipped hard enough by his jockey, Jason Kidd. Parker’s scoring will come around, eventually. His last two games have seen him choose his spots better, and he’s been dunking everything he can get his hands on.
His defense, however, is still horrible, almost the worst I have ever seen and I’m not even joking. He doubles at the worst times and is extremely slow to recover. Pick and roll defense? Chasing the ball-handler out and then lazily returning to your original man seconds after the pass has already been made is not the typical defensive strategy for that play.
His early benching in the first quarter was probably due to this. The greatest incentive to playing better defense is the threat of having minutes taken away.