Milwaukee Bucks: Takeaways In Loss To Dallas Mavericks

A Tale Of Two Halves For Jabari

Before the real story of the game presented itself, the opening minutes of the game were about Jabari Parker‘s red hot start.

One by one, Parker quickly filled up buckets by hitting five of his first seven shots and most importantly, showed the confidence in his jumper we’d all like to see him have on a regular basis.

With Giannis on the bench for almost the entire first quarter, Parker was the anchor the Bucks needed to help keep them in their rhythm and it looked like it would continue as it crept into the second quarter.

But as we know, that wasn’t the case and as the ship known as the Bucks offense slowly started to sink midway through the second quarter, Parker went down with it. That coincided with his matchup, Harrison Barnes, starting to get hot from the field and he would later finish with a career-high 34 points.

In a team-high 39 minutes, Jabari finished with 16 points (on 8-of-16 shooting from the field), 7 rebounds, 4 turnovers and -19 plus-minus.

There’s enough there to like from Jabari’s performance, even despite his later struggles. The confidence, the aggressiveness and the composure were all there at the beginning of his game.  Nonetheless, it’s tough to overlook what later went wrong for him and we can only hope it was more out of the ordinary, considering the circumstances.