Chicago Bulls: How will Jabari Parker fit in next year?

How he fits

Well, here comes the bad news: Despite the fun of having a Chicago native be a marquee starter for the Bulls (there’s hardly a Bulls fan who didn’t love Derrick Rose for his Chi-town loyalty), the truth is that Jabari Parker doesn’t make all too much sense with this roster.

While Parker’s scoring is welcomed, as any scoring should be, with guys like Lauri Markkanen and Zach LaVine in the mix, the best fit for Parker would be coming off the bench, where he could do damage to opposing second units. However, he is a big investment to deploy in the second unit.

So if he starts, which he likely will, he is indeed a player that coach Fred Hoiberg will be happy to unleash as a rebound-grabbing, pace-pushing, scoring combo-forward.

Looking at his usage rates, it’s clear that there just might not be enough to go around for the current projected starters.

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Parker had a 24.4 percent usage rate last season, and in his fruitful 2016-17 campaign (pre-injury), he needed a 26.5 percent usage rate to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Zach LaVine ended with a 29.5 percent usage rate last season, which was good for averages of 16.7 points, 3.9 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game. Guess who else needed around 29 percent usage? Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Anthony Davis. He isn’t them. Something is wrong.

Finally there is the promising young stretch forward Lauri Markkanen, who only had a 21.9 percent usage rate last season while going for 15.2 points and 7.5 rebounds a night.

Despite the fact that plenty of inefficient players rank higher than Parker for less value, there are also many forwards who are way more effective (at least when they saw minutes) and versatile than he was with just around the same usage percentages, such as Paul Millsap, Domantas Sabonis, Kelly Olynyk and Enes Kanter.

Kris Dunn will have a lot of fun finding these guys for their respective offensive explosions, but he and Wendell Carter Jr. will have their work cut out for them on defense and picking up the slack on the boards. The addition of Jabari Parker only worsened this problem.