It’s easy to get hyped for Jabari Parker after you watch his highlight videos. When he’s out there getting buckets and looking smooth AS EFF, it’s easy to come away with impression that he’s a star-level player. Frighteningly easy. And, as a producer of highlight videos, I have to be aware of the fact that my videos could be misused by hype junkies in order to fuel their sick addictions. Not only that, but they can be misused by NBA casuals who take what they see in a single highlight video and then extrapolate what they saw over an entire season, which causes asinine comments like “he can do this every game” and “all-star next year mark my words.”
Now is a good time to remind my viewers that Parker had two six-point games back-to-back recently. While he’s overall been pretty good on the ‘Zards, he’s definitely not putting up 22/15 (or anywhere close to it) on most nights. He still has a ways to go before he could accurately be described as a “star”. No matter how many sick highlight videos he generates, there’s an equal amount of games where, if his performance were distilled into a two-minute YouTube highlights package, he wouldn’t look good at all.
That shouldn’t even be the case because we know for a fact he doesn’t try at all on defense. He’s not paid to play defense so he’s not going to play any. Period. Taking that into account, he should have tons of energy on offense to do the things he wants to do. Fifteen PPG actually seems way too low for him.
You know what that means: Jabari Parker takes the reins of the ‘Zards for the remainder of the season and then neither Grunfeld or Brooks get fired?