When Jabari Parker has games like these, it’s easy to forget that every advanced stat in the universe hates his guts (and he probably hates those stats right back). It’s easy to forget that he literally told the media that he doesn’t see the point of playing defense. It’s easy to forget that his knee ligaments have the appearance and consistency of cranberry-flavored cream cheese. It’s easy to forget all of that. Because the dude can flat out score.
If you watch this highlight video and come away from it with any conclusion other than “Jabari Parker is an unstoppable scoring machine”, then I failed in my task, because that is definitely the conclusion that I am trying to get people to form here. You don’t see his misses or his defensive lapses (not like I really care about defensive lapses; DTB does not care about defense), but you do see him overpower defenders despite his injury history.
If this is Jabari’s destiny, to put up points on a bad team while making enemies with the coach, I think I’m fine with that. As long as it generates fun highlight videos and he gets paid. Everybody wins in that scenario. Except Jabari himself, who would actually not be winning very much at all in that scenario.