I don't understand why so many are saying Jabari Parker is an upgrade on Mo Wagner. Mo Wagner is a borderline to end of bench level NBA player. Jabari Parker does not even belong in this league and has not for many years.
His offense is good but his defense is dreadful and takes far more off the table than his offense adds to it.
A downgrade and a waste of a roster spot. At least we still have Semi and Grant Williams at PF to stop this guy from hurting our team too much. Still what a waste of a roster spot.
I don’t think it’s possible for an NBA player to be more useless than Wagner has been here. We don’t need five centers, but even by the theoretical standard of “what do you want from your fifth center”, he was below that.
Parker’s defense really is atrocious. Like, Kyrie bad, or worse. But, in today’s offense-only league, I think a good offense / terrible defense player can get minutes. If anything, a failure to foster those types of players is one of Stevens’ weaknesses; it limits the talent pool. I mean, we’ve been living with the inverse of that — good defense, terrible offense — for years.
When you are a disgrace of a defender, you need to be an immense offensive talent. Not merely a good one. If you are only a good one, you are still a net negative and a large one at that -- which is what Jabari Parker is.
You need to be passable defensively -- like low effort Kyrie -- to be merely good on offense to be of use to an NBA team.
Otherwise, you are better off with a limited offensive threat like Semi or Grant Williams because at least they won't hurt you as bad as a player like Jabari Parker will. They have less positive contributions but also far less negative contributions to the team. A net positive over Jabari.
There are bad defenders.
And there are pathetic defenders. Jabari is pathetic.
And he is not good enough offensively to make up for how bad he is defensively. He'll have a good enough game every once in a while (say 1 out 5) where he is a net positive for you but the rest of the time he is just hurting you (say 4 out of 5 games).
He just does not bring enough to the table.
He is not an NBA player. He should go abroad to a slower less athletic league. He could succeed in that environment and have a good professional career. Someplace like China or Europe.
Injuries have decimated his quickness & agility on defense. He is not an NBA player.
