The Jabari Discussion Thread - Back 2/2

[M-C-G]

Anybody have an estimate / idea when Parker will be back?

AS Break

Is it ahead of schedule or just right on time? Hope he gets back 100%. Thanks for replying btw.

They showed pictures of him dunking and doing drills at the end of October, but would guess that they are going to be extra careful and wait until after the all star break either way.

[Prince12]

AS Break

Is it ahead of schedule or just right on time? Hope he gets back 100%. Thanks for replying btw.

They showed pictures of him dunking and doing drills at the end of October, but would guess that they are going to be extra careful and wait until after the all star break either way.

They've said a few times that under no circumstances will he come back in under a year. Which is a kinda weird thing to straight out say no matter what but given it's his second I have no issue with taking some extra caution.

I just believe when he's good to go he should ease his way back into it. If that's around new year then so be it.

[LogitechBucks]

I think it is time for Bucks to cut the chord with Jabari. Let me preference that by saying that I think he is a nice, young man and has earned the love many fans have for him.

However, the Bucks are professional sports team and business with the goal of winning championships. The Bucks will never win a championship or even play in an NBA Championship if they resign Parker to a long term deal next season. Here's why...

Jabari was touted as one of the best lottery picks to come out of the draft in years. Analysts said he was the most, NBA ready player in the entire draft. After signing his rookie deal with the Bucks, what did Jabari do? Nothing...He had fun but took literally no steps to get his body ready for the Bucks upcoming training camp. He came into camp in terrible condition. The only person I can compare him to was Eddie Lacy with the Packers and we all know how that turned out.

Upon arriving at camp and at the beginning of the pre-season Jabari was out of breath (winded) after just a few minutes on the court. This great debate ensued. Some people thought he was fat and lazy and would turn out to be a really bad lottery pick. Others said he wasn't fat at all, it was just his natural physique. There were numerous pictures posted on this message board. Those who expressed their concerns were labeled as haters. It became quite contentious. By the time the regular season started, Jabari was still noticeably out of shape. He seemed to be able to muster energy to play offense but gave almost no effort on defense or on the boards.

Some posters suggested he be traded. There were names like Andre Drummond, Bradly Beal, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwight Howard mentioned in possible trades. These posters were ridiculed by those saying you can't trade a future superstar for such little in return. In retrospect, the Bucks would have had much success and would be in a better position than there current roster has for talent.

After the first couple of months, Jabari flashed his scoring ability and made numerous, monster dunks. However, his defense was very bad. Many were comparing his future to be that of Carmelo Anthony. Some posters felt the Bucks needed a more rounded player. Others thought a trade for a play making pg would be better than have a one dimensional scorer. There was a great debate whether Damien Lillard would be a better fit for the Bucks. A few supported the idea, most ridiculed those who supported the idea. Lillard was a one man ship in Portland because the Blazer traded away Lamarcus Aldridge that off-season. In retrospect, had that trade went down, the Bucks would have already won a playoff series in all probabilty.

A few months into the season, Jabari goes down with season ending ACL. Some posters predicted this would happen. It did. When it happened, there was this great debate over whether his conditioning had anything to do with the injury. Many were in denial back then, but came to realize his conditioning and body mass was a problem when Jabari went down for the second time.

After Jabari came back from his first Knee Surgery, he showed substantial improvement in his outside shooting. He developed a very polished offensive game for such a young player. He was putting up 20PPG on fairly low volume shooting. His defense was still terrible. He seemed to be confused on defense. Other times he seemed to not give the effort needed to be a good defender. His conditioning still seemed to be an issue. His offensive efficiency was not translating into wins either. He would score 20 but would be directly responsible for six to eight easy point per game on defense.

Posters once again suggested he be traded. Boston had made it known that they were willing to trade both Avery Bradley and Jae Crowder. There were rumors they wanted Jabari in return. A few posters supported that move, concluding these were the perfect type of players to surround Giannis with. Most posters condemned those posters saying that a surgically repaired Jabari was still worth more than two role players.

Then, the worst possible fate happens. Jabari injures the same knee and is not out for another full calendar year. Surprisingly, the Bucks go on a roll. Their defensive becomes one of the defenses in the league and they make the playoffs. In their series against Toronto they took took the lead and had a chance to win a series for the first time in like forever.

Then the ghost of Jabari came back to haunt them. In long, self-serving statement to the team, Jabari interjects himself into the series. He talks about himself, his rehab, his feelings and how much he deserves to be out there and so on. While he says he is proud of his teammates, the majority of this long, long statement was about himself. This became a distraction. It seemed in many ways to take the life out of the team. The Bucks were never the same and got out hustled the next two games and there dream of winning a playoff series was done.

I don't believe for a minute this long, emotional tirade came from Jabari himself without any help. It is quite obvious this statment came from his unscrupulous agent, Mark Bartelstein. This agent is a Master at holding teams hostage. He knew that Jabari's prospects for signing a massive, max extension was in jeopardy. He knew how close the Milwaukee community is to their young stars. He was simply using heart felt emotion to build worth for his client. Unfortunately, Jabari bought into this non-sense. "He wants to raise his family in Milwaukee" and so on. Hell, as far as I know, Jabari didn't even have a girlfriend at the time.

The Bucks are now at a crossroads. They have a nice team with the addition of Eric Bledsoe. They now have 4 legitimate, talented scorers. What they don't have is quality interior defense and rebounding. The prospects of getting any quality players to fill this void is unlikely without trading Jabari. The teams salary cap is also now a big problem. With 33 million per year owed to Delly, Telly and Henson and the fact that the Bucks are staring down the Luxury Tax threshold makes it next to impossible to fill this void next season through free agency. Delly is now pretty much useless. Henson is awful and plays on most night with lack luster intensity. He can't rebound to save his life. Add in the fact that it cost will $15 million plus to keep Jabari and we are now well over the luxury tax threshold with no possibility to add a quality big man. We can't play Giannis at the Center position or he will foul out of every game or sustain a major injury.

Jabari still has some trade value. It's called the "great unknown factor" Teams like Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, New Jersey, and Sacramento will have cap room and one of them will take a shot at Jabari in Free Agency. Can we really afford to take that kind of risk and match their offer? If we do and Jabari blows out that knee again, we will lose the greatest Star the Bucks have ever had. The team will not be able to put championship level talent around Giannis and he will leave. We had chances before to vastly improve our team by trading Jabari and we blew it. This is our last chance and humbly suggest we trade him before he has no value left and we get stuck with a mammoth contract that cripples this franchise for years. Thanks for taking your time to read my post.

[imithanos]

Jabari would be a force in a well-coached team.

[yannisk]

In their series against Toronto they took took the lead and had a chance to win a series for the first time in like forever.

Then the ghost of Jabari came back to haunt them. In long, self-serving statement to the team, Jabari interjects himself into the series. He talks about himself, his rehab, his feelings and how much he deserves to be out there and so on. While he says he is proud of his teammates, the majority of this long, long statement was about himself. This became a distraction. It seemed in many ways to take the life out of the team. The Bucks were never the same and got out hustled the next two games and there dream of winning a playoff series was done.

While I agree in much of the rest of the post, I find this part unfair. Come on, we cannot put any of the loss to Toronto on Jabari

[TroyD92]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

[coolhandluke121]

This is our last chance and humbly suggest we trade him before he has no value left and we get stuck with a mammoth contract that cripples this franchise for years. Thanks for taking your time to read my post.

Really good post and thanks for a good overview of the Jabari era, which I hope will come to a merciful end soon. The most important part of this post is just that they would be fools to pay him a lot. It's much too risky. They're better off saving that salary slot to add an MLE player every year. As long as they don't go into the lux tax, they can use the full MLE, and as long as they have Giannis, some of the best MLE players will at least consider Milwaukee.

I agree that it's a little unfair to imply that his letter affected the Toronto series. I do have issues with the letter but that's not one of them. It's correct to point out why the letter was kind of inappropriate, but I doubt it affected the Bucks. It did leave me wondering about his agent's role, and I was really disappointed with the way he acted like he's still so important to the team and a leader. Did it not register at all that they were arguably better without him? Is it too much to ask for him to at least ONCE acknowledge that he needs to improve on defense? He did interject himself unnecessarily. I wish we had a more detailed account of what happened in that team meeting where all the vets shot him down for speaking up, but there's evidence (albeit circumstantial) of a MAJOR disconnect between what Jabari's actually place is on the team and what he thinks it is. Asking for a max deal in his situation doesn't help. He won't improve on defense if he's so delusional about his impact that he doesn't think he needs to. Just because he has a more likable persona than Big Dog doesn't mean he's any better on the court.

Where were you during all those debates? We could have used you. I had forgotten all about the Lillard debates very early on. Wow. What a miserable thing to think about at this hour. Other trade debates you forgot to mention include Porter/Gortat, Hood/Exum, Hood/Favors, the 2017 or 2018 BK pick, the Jaylen Brown pick, Jokic, Conley, and Cousins. They were almost all hated here, and there was a poll where something like 80% of people said they wouldn't trade Jabari unless they got a top 10-15 player in return. It was a really bad time to be here if you didn't have a thick pair of homer glasses to wear at all times.

[ReginaldDwight]

Well I guess we will see how he looks on the QO next season.

[jakecronus8]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

[crkone]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

I'd kill for a Michael Redd on this team next to Giannis.

[TroyD92]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

Yeah Michael Redd and Jabari are totally comparable players. Makes perfect sense.

[DingleJerry]

Spoiler:

This is our last chance and humbly suggest we trade him before he has no value left and we get stuck with a mammoth contract that cripples this franchise for years. Thanks for taking your time to read my post.

Really good post and thanks for a good overview of the Jabari era, which I hope will come to a merciful end soon. The most important part of this post is just that they would be fools to pay him a lot. It's much too risky. They're better off saving that salary slot to add an MLE player every year. As long as they don't go into the lux tax, they can use the full MLE, and as long as they have Giannis, some of the best MLE players will at least consider Milwaukee.

I agree that it's a little unfair to imply that his letter affected the Toronto series. I do have issues with the letter but that's not one of them. It's correct to point out why the letter was kind of inappropriate, but I doubt it affected the Bucks. It did leave me wondering about his agent's role, and I was really disappointed with the way he acted like he's still so important to the team and a leader. Did it not register at all that they were arguably better without him? Is it too much to ask for him to at least ONCE acknowledge that he needs to improve on defense? He did interject himself unnecessarily. I wish we had a more detailed account of what happened in that team meeting where all the vets shot him down for speaking up, but there's evidence (albeit circumstantial) of a MAJOR disconnect between what Jabari's actually place is on the team and what he thinks it is. Asking for a max deal in his situation doesn't help. He won't improve on defense if he's so delusional about his impact that he doesn't think he needs to. Just because he has a more likable persona than Big Dog doesn't mean he's any better on the court.

Where were you during all those debates? We could have used you. I had forgotten all about the Lillard debates very early on. Wow. What a miserable thing to think about at this hour. Other trade debates you forgot to mention include Porter/Gortat, Hood/Exum, Hood/Favors, the 2017 or 2018 BK pick, the Jaylen Brown pick, Jokic, Conley, and Cousins. They were almost all hated here, and there was a poll where something like 80% of people said they wouldn't trade Jabari unless they got a top 10-15 player in return. It was a really bad time to be here if you didn't have a thick pair of homer glasses to wear at all times.

pretty much my first discussion on this board was the Lillard debate as one of the 3-4 people in favor of trading Jabari for Lillard, I member. One of the others, who was the most aggressive arguer, was ridiculed enough and mocked that he quit posting. Keep in mind that argument was while Jabari was still out with the first ACL and hadn't come back yet. If you were given a top 25ish player aged 25ish at the time straight up for a guy with a torn ACL you'd be crazy not to take it. Yet it was viewed the opposite.

[BucksRule18]

Once Jabari comes back from his injury sometime early next year, the Bucks should restrict his playing time to 18-20 minutes per game coming off the bench. Hopefully he can give us some quality minutes as a bench scorer, but not be our go-to guy. The last thing I want to see is Jabari playing 35 minutes a game, going an inefficient 8 for 22, averaging 20 points a game, and inflating his value. If he's averaging 9/4/2 by the end of the season, I would be shocked if any team would offer him anything close to a max contract. Even a team like the Bulls will be weary signing Jabari after what happened with Rose and his knee.

If the Bucks want to keep Parker, then offer him an extension at 4/60 with a 4th year player option and see what happens. If he wants to test the market as a restricted free agent, then at least he'll know what the Bucks are willing to pay if he receives offers elsewhere. What I mean is that if another team offers something like 4/72, he will more than likely consider it knowing that there isn't a huge 5/150 pay day coming from the Bucks the following year. I still think matching another offer at $18 million per year is still overpaying for a player like Jabari coming off of 2 ACL's, but at least it's better than $30 million. The situation with Embiid is different, since he is their Giannis. They likely wouldn't have maxed out the No. 2 or 3 player on the team if they had suffered multiple injuries.

[TroyD92]

^that post made zero sense

[coolhandluke121]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

Yeah Michael Redd and Jabari are totally comparable players. Makes perfect sense.

Redd was abetter scorer. Could get you 25+ on good efficiency even though every team knew he was their only threat and threw the whole defense at him. Jabari has not been anything special when given a larger role in creating offense on his own, and has mostly thrived when he's played off Giannis and/or Khris. Other than Bucks homers, most national observers are noticing that. That's why he was lower in ESPN's rankings after his first successful comeback than he was right after he tore his ACL the first time. He came back stronger and more athletic than ever, put up close to 20 ppg on elite efficiency in the spring of 2016, and was promptly dropped 20 spots from where he was after tearing his ACL the first time. They know fool's gold scoring when they see it; only the staunchest of homers continue to deny the extent of the problems. And at least Redd had a few years where he was a solid all-around contributor before he got paid and stopped being an active rebounder and defender; Jabari doesn't even have that. And Redd didn't already have knee injuries when the Bucks paid him.

So yeah, you're right that it's not a fair comparison at all.

[jakecronus8]

Jabari has a long way to go to reach Redd level impact offensively and is worse defensively. My point was Redd was not worth the max, and neither is Jabari.

[RRyder823]

Some Bulls fans are under the impression that Parker's a 3 and would be worth taking a chance on as the future at SF.

From what I've seen he's a PF first and foremost.. thoughts?

Parker is a 3 through and through so it would seem like the Bulls fans in question are correct

Sent from my SM-G892A using RealGM mobile app

[RRyder823]

Meh I'm not trading Jabari for the crap you'll get for him. You don't lose talented players because the previous GM/regime gave out **** contracts to borderline NBA players. Don't compound mistakes.

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

I'd kill for a Michael Redd on this team next to Giannis.

Right.

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[emunney]

Jabari and Markkanen is kind of an awkward pairing to me, much more so than Jabari and Giannis. Markkanen and Giannis would be awesome, but obviously that's not happening.

[TroyD92]

This is how you get guys like Michael Redd signing max deals.

Yeah Michael Redd and Jabari are totally comparable players. Makes perfect sense.

Redd was abetter scorer. Could get you 25+ on good efficiency even though every team knew he was their only threat and threw the whole defense at him. Jabari has not been anything special when given a larger role in creating offense on his own, and has mostly thrived when he's played off Giannis and/or Khris. Other than Bucks homers, most national observers are noticing that. That's why he was lower in ESPN's rankings after his first successful comeback than he was right after he tore his ACL the first time. He came back stronger and more athletic than ever, put up close to 20 ppg on elite efficiency in the spring of 2016, and was promptly dropped 20 spots from where he was after tearing his ACL the first time. They know fool's gold scoring when they see it; only the staunchest of homers continue to deny the extent of the problems. And at least Redd had a few years where he was a solid all-around contributor before he got paid and stopped being an active rebounder and defender; Jabari doesn't even have that. And Redd didn't already have knee injuries when the Bucks paid him.

So yeah, you're right that it's not a fair comparison at all.

Arguing with you about Jabari is the biggest waste of time I can think of.