Official #2 Pick Thread - Ford #7: Parker

[coolhandluke121]

GIannis + Parker duo excites the hell out of me.

I feel like they both need the ball a lot to be effective. They would potentially be a match-up nightmare for opposing frontcourts, but they wouldn't be able to take full advantage if they don't work together. Parker could throw a wrench in those plans by either not playing well of off Giannis or by not passing to him when he has the more favorable matchup.

I'm also not convinced that the Giannis/Parker combo would have enough offense to make up for the defense. You can have sick perimeter skills, passing, and shot-creating ability, but if it usually results in a jumper, a floater, or a runner, with a few spectacular dunks mixed in, it's not going to be as efficient as an opposing frontcourt with a guy like David West who can bully either player into total submission. Throwing a guy around like a rag doll and scoring on a layup is a lot more reliable than a post-up, fadeaway, crossover, or pull-up jumper, regardless of how much individual skill is on display in the latter case.

I like Embiid. Otherwise, I'd rather they trade down. I don't believe either Parker (who reminds me of Big Dog) or Wiggins (who reminds me of a young Tim Thomas) has franchise cornerstone potential. Of course I take one of them if nobody makes a good offer, but I believe somebody will go hard ( )for Wiggins and I would take advantage. The chances of getting a franchise player might actually be better with picks 4 (Exum) and 10 (outside chance at Stauskas, Saric, Gordon, or Vonleh being better than Parker/Wiggins) than they are at 2.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Got me thinking, is there anyone in this draft with a Russell Westbrook f u type competitive mentality? It's a funny draft in that there aren't many character concern guys but maybe not any killers either.

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[JustinCredible]

I have zero concerns about Parker's work ethic. You aren't born with the skillset he has. He isn't just a freak athlete. He has put in time to develop his craft. He also isn't overweight and wasn't overweight this offseason so that can probably stop being talked about now...

[Badgerlander]

i'm sure somebody has posted this before, but it's worth bringing up again

http://deanondraft.com/2014/04/11/jabar ... lo-fellow/

Jabari Parker: Is He The Next Melo Fellow?

It’s easy to see why Parker took so many shots: he is the perceived best player on the team and carries with him a strong alpha male mentality. It is clear he believes that it is his role to carry the scoring load, so it stands to reason that he should be taking the lion’s share of shots for his team. But he took this to an extreme level. Nobody ever accused Carmelo Anthony of being unselfish, yet he took on a less gargantuan role as a freshman for Syracuse (note that I am now taking usage/o-rtg from statsheet.com, which is why Jabari’s figures are different from the prior table):

Player Usage O-Rtg Ast% Opp D-Rtg
Carmelo 27.8 113.6 11.8 96.5
Jabari 31.7 111.5 8.6 100.7
Carmelo played on a much more defensive oriented team where taking a high volume of medium efficiency shots carries more value. For reference, Duke’s team schedule adjusted O-Rtg was 123.5 vs. Syracuse’s 113.5, but their defense was much worse (102.3 vs. 91.3). Further, Carmelo was surrounded by significantly less 3 point shooting as he only had two regular teammates who made 3′s, shooting collectively 35% behind the arc. Yet he nevertheless posted a comfortably lower usage rate and higher assist rate. Once you consider context, Jabari almost makes Carmelo Anthony look like Steve Nash.

The other disconcerting trend is that Jabari Parker was significantly more efficient against bad defenses. While he is a good shooter for a freshman and has solid perimeter skills, he also operated quite a bit in the low post as he often played center for Duke. His best performance of the season came against Boston College’s swiss cheese defense, as they start bigs listed at 6’8 219 and 6’7 207. They have the #298 defense and are 238th in opponent 2p%. Naturally Jabari bullied them to kingdom come, as he finished with 29 points, 16 rebounds, and 12/17 FG in a performance that included 6 dunks. It was an entertaining show to be sure, but at the same time it was not against competition that remotely simulates NBA defense. If you break up his performance to teams that are top 100 in opposing 2p% and played a top 150 schedule (essentially weeding out Vermont who was impenetrable by pitiful America East offenses), here are how his per 40 minutes stats look:

opponent Pts FGA eFG 2PA 2p% FTA AST TOV
top 100 22.5 19.4 42.4% 14.8 41.1% 7.6 1.1 3.2
not top 100 27.1 17.8 59.4% 14.5 58.7% 8.3 1.9 2.9
Note that the sample includes 500 minutes vs. good defenses and 574 vs. bad ones. Granted, we are taking a small sample and breaking it up into two smaller samples, and one of his best performances barely misses the cutoff as UNC only has the #102 2p% defense in the country. But even if you move his two UNC games in the tough sample, he still only musters a 44.2% eFG as compared to 59.6% in the weak sample. And the fact that the performance drop off is largely driven by a drop off 2 point efficiency makes it less likely to be largely due to fluke.

The bottom line is that Jabari bullied bad teams and he bullied them hard. This inflates his stats in a way that is not necessarily predictive of NBA performance. He will still be an issue for smaller matchups in the pros, but they will become less common and there will almost always be a bigger help defender on the floor. He still needs to develop his decision making and perimeter skills significantly to become an efficient scorer against NBA defenses, because his bullying did not work so well against tougher NCAA opposition.

For reference, here are Carmelo Anthony’s per 40 splits given the same criteria:

opponent Pts FGA eFG 2PA 2p% FTA AST TOV
top 100 24 19.5 48.0% 14.5 47.9% 7.5 2.1 2.8
not top 100 25.3 18.7 53.5% 13.1 53.2% 7.5 3 1.7
Note that Carmelo also faced a higher % of good defenses, with 842 minutes in the tough sample vs. 432 in the weak sample. Naturally Melo’s performance fell off vs. serious defenses, but he padded his stats less vs. weaker teams and did not have a massive eFG% or 2p% chasm between the two splits. Also while his assists and turnovers both suffered against tougher teams, his ratio in the tough sample is still much better than that of Jabari which implies that he may have a superior feel for the game.

Again, take these splits with a grain of salt due to sample size issues, but it aligns with my perception. Jabari relied moreso on rim scoring against undersized competition whereas Melo’s midrange dominance translates to higher levels of competition with ease.

While they appear to be similar prospects at a glance, freshman Melo is comfortably superior to freshman Jabari. There is the possibility that Jabari merely needs time to adjust to being stoppable at the rim and adapt his game accordingly, but I would have felt better about this hypothesis if he had displayed some level of improvement down the stretch.

So why am I not screaming at the top of my lungs that Jabari will be a bust? There are a myriad of slippery aspects to any Jabari analysis, and I am not certain that these issues are indicative of any fundamental flaw that will invariably undermine him throughout his career. He still has an intriguing blend of size and skills, and he will be forced to improve his decision making when he learns that trying to repeatedly dunk on players such as Roy Hibbert is difficult. He’s such a fiery competitor that it’s not difficult to envision him finding a way to make his offense work in the pros, especially if he lands with a good coach. And while his defense was not great, he did post excellent rebound numbers and solid steals and blocks. So I am reticent to sour too heavily on Jabari, as there is much to like. But I also think he has a wider range of outcomes than common narratives dictate, since he does need to overhaul his offensive approach to succeed as a pro. It’s possible that he doesn’t peak any higher than a Jeff Green level combo forward who is a solid scorer but does not bring enough else to the table to be particularly valuable.

[Ron Swanson]

I get that people desperately want a guy (Parker) who has the potential to carry the scoring load on any given night. What I don't understand is how unimportant defense and distributing appear to be to those same people advocating that we take Jabari #2.

If we were talking about some "transcendent" college scorer, then I could see how you could overlook such glaring weaknesses, but Parker isn't that yet (or may never be), at least from what we saw this last season. Unless he greatly improves his defense, he isn't going to be able to stay in front of elite wing scorers and will get bullied by bigger, longer PF's. And, as discussed before, his assist #'s and % are pretty horrendous considering how much iso he ran as the primary ball-handler.

Embiid is a great passer and has the potential to dominate on both ends of the court. Wiggins to a much lesser extent (doesn't possess the court vision that Embiid does) has the ability to as well. I have yet to hear an argument in favor of Parker over either of those guys that doesn't involve the "alpha male" label being thrown around. "Alpha male" has become the new "clutch" of overused, un-quantifiable, cliches that needs no evidence to back up.

Needless to say, I won't be devastated if we pass up either Embiid or Wiggins for Parker at #2, but I'll certainly be disappointed to say the least. He's still my clear #3 prospect and I don't think he's on the same tier as Embiid/Wiggins.

[LUKE23]

Trading down is a terrible idea. We don't need depth, and even if you don't think Wiggins/Parker are true cornerstone types, they are clearly better prospects than the guys outside the top 4. Either way, it doesn't matter, we won't trade out of the top 4. I'd put the odds we trade out of 2 at less than 5%.

[europa]

Trading down is a terrible idea.

Agreed. I don't see any reason why you'd pass on Wiggins, Parker or even Embiid if they're on the board for you. Take one of them and begin the party.

[El Duderino]

So this Hill/Jabari comparison... we're really just trying to make the point that because of Jabari's ball-handling ability, he could potentially be a creator on top of being a scorer? Because he's pretty much a non-existent passer at the moment. If you watch the games, it was pretty obvious that he has some chucker potential, and his assist percentage certainly backs that up as well. His assist percentage is lower than Embiid, Randle, Jerami Grant, Aaron Gordon, James Young, Rodney Hood, Adreian Payne, and Jarnell Stokes just to name a few. But basically, in terms of assist percentage, Jabari's among the worst of any player likely to be drafted regardless of position, and that's not even considering that his assist percentage once they got to conference play was even lower.

Of players with a usage % over 20, only 4 players that are likely to be drafted had an assist percentage lower than Jabari's:

Noah Vonleh, Cleanthony Early, DeAndre Daniels, and Glenn Robinson III (and then you have 2 or 3 borderline draftable guys like CJ Fair and LaQuinton Ross). That's unbelievably bad. In conference play, Wiggins assist % was twice as high as Jabari's, but we think Jabari will be a solid creator and Wiggins can't create for teammates at all? I just don't buy it. Unless Jabari changes his game a ton in the NBA, he's probably going to be less of a passer than Carmelo.

Others who delve into the draft have also brought up just how poor Parker's assist percentage was and red flags which can come from that. For a guy who attracted so much defensive attention and who is said to be a really smart player, he rarely used that to get easy shots for teammates when defenses converged on him. It's not like he was on some bad team either where his teammates lacked talent to score, so it wouldn't be wise to pass to open teammates.

That said, it's fairly common for ball dominant scorers in high school to need some time to learn how to become better passers as the competition level increases, as does the talent of their teammates. Durant barely passed the ball as a freshman at Texas. Your point is accurate though that Parker wasn't a creator at all last season except for creating shots for himself.

[machu46]

So this Hill/Jabari comparison... we're really just trying to make the point that because of Jabari's ball-handling ability, he could potentially be a creator on top of being a scorer? Because he's pretty much a non-existent passer at the moment. If you watch the games, it was pretty obvious that he has some chucker potential, and his assist percentage certainly backs that up as well. His assist percentage is lower than Embiid, Randle, Jerami Grant, Aaron Gordon, James Young, Rodney Hood, Adreian Payne, and Jarnell Stokes just to name a few. But basically, in terms of assist percentage, Jabari's among the worst of any player likely to be drafted regardless of position, and that's not even considering that his assist percentage once they got to conference play was even lower.

Of players with a usage % over 20, only 4 players that are likely to be drafted had an assist percentage lower than Jabari's:

Noah Vonleh, Cleanthony Early, DeAndre Daniels, and Glenn Robinson III (and then you have 2 or 3 borderline draftable guys like CJ Fair and LaQuinton Ross). That's unbelievably bad. In conference play, Wiggins assist % was twice as high as Jabari's, but we think Jabari will be a solid creator and Wiggins can't create for teammates at all? I just don't buy it. Unless Jabari changes his game a ton in the NBA, he's probably going to be less of a passer than Carmelo.

Others who delve into the draft have also brought up just how poor Parker's assist percentage was and red flags which can come from that. For a guy who attracted so much defensive attention and who is said to be a really smart player, he rarely used that to get easy shots for teammates when defenses converged on him. It's not like he was on some bad team either where his teammates lacked talent to score, so it wouldn't be wise to pass to open teammates.

That said, it's fairly common for ball dominant scorers in high school to need some time to learn how to become better passers as the competition level increases, as does the talent of their teammates. Durant barely passed the ball as a freshman at Texas. Your point is accurate though that Parker wasn't a creator at all last season except for creating shots for himself.

Yeah, I was actually just about to post to make the point that the one solid counter argument is that Durant's assist percentage was identical to Jabari's, and he has become a solid distributor. He's almost certainly the exception to the rule though.

[JustinCredible]

Trading down is a terrible idea. We don't need depth, and even if you don't think Wiggins/Parker are true cornerstone types, they are clearly better prospects than the guys outside the top 4. Either way, it doesn't matter, we won't trade out of the top 4. I'd put the odds we trade out of 2 at less than 5%.

I would be much more comfortable with the Parker pick if we were taking him at #3 and adding the #10 pick or a future 1st with it.

[LUKE23]

Sure, but the chances Philly does that is slim to none. I know people think they love Wiggins enough to do that, but I'll believe it when I see it. I'm guessing they'd do backflips with Parker.

[jakecronus8]

Trading down is a terrible idea. We don't need depth, and even if you don't think Wiggins/Parker are true cornerstone types, they are clearly better prospects than the guys outside the top 4. Either way, it doesn't matter, we won't trade out of the top 4. I'd put the odds we trade out of 2 at less than 5%.

I would be much more comfortable with the Parker pick if we were taking him at #3 and adding the #10 pick or a future 1st with it.

Exactly. I'm ok with Parker at 2, but I'd be disappointed. Snagging another top 10 pick with him is the only way I'd be really happy to take him.

ETA: if we could get Orlando to agree to 12&4 for 2, we could probably get Philly to bite last second, if they truly value Wiggins as highly as they allegedly do.

[El Duderino]

Let's just hope Jabari isn't going to go #1. I think he has an excellent chance to be the top pick.

I hope he goes #1. That leaves Embiid or Wiggins for us. Works for me.

That would be a dream scenario for me

If i hear the Cavs pick Parker at one on draft night, instead of drinking just a shot of tequila in celebration, i might polish off the whole bottle.

[buckboy]

I'd take Wiggins #1 without thinking twice.

[europa]

I'd take Wiggins #1 without thinking twice.

Ditto. To me, it's a slam dunk. He's the guy.

[JustinCredible]

I'd take Wiggins #1 without thinking twice.

Ditto. To me, it's a slam dunk. He's the guy.

Maybe Embiid's back doesn't check out and Cavs take Parker. A guy can dream.

[El Duderino]

Others who delve into the draft have also brought up just how poor Parker's assist percentage was and red flags which can come from that. For a guy who attracted so much defensive attention and who is said to be a really smart player, he rarely used that to get easy shots for teammates when defenses converged on him. It's not like he was on some bad team either where his teammates lacked talent to score, so it wouldn't be wise to pass to open teammates.

That said, it's fairly common for ball dominant scorers in high school to need some time to learn how to become better passers as the competition level increases, as does the talent of their teammates. Durant barely passed the ball as a freshman at Texas. Your point is accurate though that Parker wasn't a creator at all last season except for creating shots for himself.

Yeah, I was actually just about to post to make the point that the one solid counter argument is that Durant's assist percentage was identical to Jabari's, and he has become a solid distributor. He's almost certainly the exception to the rule though.

I do think though part of what made Durant a much better passer as the years have gone by in the NBA is that he's such a dominant and efficient scorer. This has caused defenses to focus so much attention on him that at times he almost has to pass the ball when being double and even triple teamed.

If instead Parker just becomes more of a high usage volume scorer in the NBA, but not a really efficient one, the odds will likely decrease that he develops into a much better passer than the terrible one he was last year at Duke.

[Wise1]

The ONLY scenario that I see the Bucks taking Wiggins at #2 would be if there were a pre-arranged trade with Philly to trade his rights for the 3 and 10. The Bucks would still get Parker and another solid player at 10. If I hear Wiggins' name on draft day when the Bucks are on the clock, I'll calmly wait for the trade announcement.

[machu46]

The ONLY scenario that I see the Bucks taking Wiggins at #2 would be if there were a pre-arranged trade with Philly to trade his rights for the 3 and 10. The Bucks would still get Parker and another solid player at 10. If I hear Wiggins' name on draft day when the Bucks are on the clock, I'll calmly wait for the trade announcement.

Why do you think there's no chance that our FO likes Wiggins? I understand you don't like him, and that you would hope a trade is arranged if we draft him at #2, but I don't really understand where your certainty that we have no interest in him comes from besides just hoping that our FO thinks the way that you do.

[buckboy]

I've seen a lot of comparisons of Wiggins and McGrady on here. Not sure if I agree, but isn't McGrady coupled with the defense Wiggins is likely to play an mvp level player?