Milwaukee Bucks Season Grades: Jabari Parker

Second up in my series of Milwaukee Bucks season grades is the man with a Gatorade commercial under his belt, Jabari Parker.

For @JabariParker, recovery is just the beginning.https://t.co/dyK0J5flFh
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) March 13, 2015

Parker played an important role in the Bucks’ early success this past season, and he’ll play an even larger role in the team’s future success. The Chicago native possesses a unique blend of size and athleticism that wowed me countless times during his freshman season at Duke.

He continued to shock me in Bucks’ Summer League games with moves like this:

And then in the preseason with moves like this:

It’s moves like those two that make his full recovery from ACL surgery an absolute necessity. His game relies on athleticism.

Fortunately though, Parker has youth on his side in his recovery and has been able to focus on improving his knowledge of the game. Seeing Derrick Rose operating in these playoffs at a high level makes me confident that Jabari will return without missing a step.

Offensive Grade: B

One of the biggest tragedies of the 2014-15 Bucks’ season was that Jabari Parker never got the chance to be the primary option on offense. When healthy, he was a solid contributor, but the presence of Brandon Knight kept Parker from having free rein.

The former Bucks’ point guard often put up a shot or found a cutting teammate before the offense could run through Jabari. In part this was a good thing because Parker was in his first months of professional basketball. It played a part in teaching him to score in an efficient manner, something he got very good at.

Had Parker stayed healthy though, he would have seen an uptick in shots per game after Knight was traded to Phoenix. There’s a natural period of struggling when a young player receives a heavier workload on offense, and he could have gotten that out of the way in his rookie season rather than his sophomore campaign. Jabari’s only 20 though so he’s still well ahead of most prospects in his development.

Here are the numbers Jabari Parker put up in his two months of basketball:

G	GS	MP	FG	FGA	FG%	3P	3PA	3P%	FT	FTA	FT%	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	TOV	PTS
25	25	29.5	5.2	10.5	.490	0.2	0.6	.250	1.8	2.6	.697	2.0	3.5	5.5	1.7	1.9	12.3
25	25	29.5	5.2	10.5	.490	0.2	0.6	.250	1.8	2.6	.697	2.0	3.5	5.5	1.7	1.9	12.3

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/10/2015.

A wing player that averages 12.3 points on 49 percent shooting without a three-point shot is terrific. He did that playing 29.5 minutes per game also, a stat that will probably be north of 35 in his prime.

I’m confident that Parker will become a complete player and add the three-pointer to his repertoire as well. He shot 35.8 percent on three-pointers at Duke and he had a large sample size, averaging 3.0 attempts per game.

Here’s the very limited three-point shot chart from Jabari’s first season in the NBA.

2014-15 Jabari Parker Three-Point Attempts Shot Chart

As you can see, he didn’t shoot enough to say he struggled at it and the few makes he had certainly don’t designate it as a strength. Parker gets a significant amount of lift on his jumpshot so it’s unlikely that he has been able to work on this during his rehab. Because of this, we may see him struggle from behind the arc at the beginning of next season, but he’ll find his three-point shot eventually.

Something that he can work on during his rehab is his free throw shot. Parker only shot 69.7 percent at the line this season and he’ll need to get that at least above 75 percent to be a more consistent scorer every night.

Jabari Parker also proved to be impressive on the offensive glass as he averaged two offensive rebounds per game.

Defensive Grade: C-

Coming into the league, defense was the biggest concern for Jabari Parker. His poor defensive reputation wasn’t helped in college when his head coach, Mike Krzyzewski, benched him in the final minutes of Duke’s NCAA Tournament loss to Mercer.

For as athletic as a player as he is, he’s not much of a rim protector. Parker played alongside an excellent rim protector in Larry Sanders for most of his minutes, yet his defensive numbers don’t look good. A lot of this is because he would get caught watching the ball on defense and let his man get a lot of space.

The most appalling defensive stat for Parker is the percentage that opponents shot when guarded by him. Per NBA.com, the opposition shot 51.6 percent when guarded by him, 7.1 percent above league average. The area of the floor that Parker is the worst at defending is within 10 feet of the rim where opponents shoot a heart attack-inducing 68.2 percent.

Even with those horrid individual numbers though, Jason Kidd‘s defense minimized the damage. Here’s some of his team-oriented defensive numbers:

G	GS	MP	STL	BLK	PF	DRtg
25	25	738	2.1	0.3	2.9	103
25	25	738	2.1	0.3	2.9	103

G	MP	PER	DRB%	STL%	BLK%	USG%	DWS	DBPM	VORP
25	738	14.5	13.5	2.1	0.6	20.7	1.0	0.2	0.1
25	738	14.5	13.5	2.1	0.6	20.7	1.0	0.2	0.1

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/10/2015.

Parker’s defensive rating was 103 which is only slightly higher than the Bucks’ team defensive rating of 102.2. His defensive plus/minus was actually positive as well at +0.2.

I’m even more of a believer in the Bucks’ defense after seeing that. If Kidd and his coaching staff can mask Jabari Parker’s defensive deficiencies that well, Parker was drafted into the perfect situation.

Overall Grade: B-

His defensive grade made a C+ the likely final grade, but I bumped it up to a B- because his poor defense didn’t harm the team significantly. Even a B- seems a bit disappointing given Jabari Parker was drafted No. 2 overall, but that’s what an early season-ending injury will do.

Parker did, however, show enough to justify the Bucks selecting him over the likes of Joel Embiid or Dante Exum and that’s really the most important thing that a draft pick can do.

Next: Stephen Curry: Top 10 Moments From His MVP Season

Offensive Grade: B

Defensive Grade: C-

Overall Grade: B-

More from Hoops Habit