Now that his time with the Milwaukee Bucks has officially come to a close, we look back on Jabari Parker‘s four years in Milwaukee and ultimately examine the unfulfilled tenure he leaves behind due to a variety of factors.
Once viewed as a franchise cornerstone, Jabari Parker’s stint with the Milwaukee Bucks came to an unfortunate end on Saturday morning.
For a good portion of Bucks fans, that is and will continue to be a harsh reality to come to terms with, considering Parker stood as a rare hope when the organization reached its nadir and was drowning in irrelevancy when he was drafted second overall in the 2014 NBA Draft.
A blue-chip prospect coming out of Simeon Career Academy in Chicago and subsequently at Duke University, it had been a long time since someone of Parker’s pedigree had donned a Bucks uniform and he was the reward following the Bucks’ franchise-worst 15-win season back in 2013-14.
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Add in the fact that Parker took to the city of Milwaukee with open arms, at a time when a rare few former Bucks players did, and the attachment that many fans held upon his arrival was only enhanced. As time went on there was an increased desire to watch something of a homegrown star lead the team into the future.
But there were obviously a number of mitigating factors that kept the potential he possessed from being fully realized. Not one but two torn ACLs, both striking his left knee on eerily similar plays in December 15, 2014 as well as February 8, 2017, limited Parker to 183 appearances out of a possible 328 games, plus the Bucks’ playoff runs in 2015 and 2017.
The result of Parker being sidelined for significant periods of time is the Bucks were prevented from seeing him develop alongside the core headlined by superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Secondly, the reported friction Parker had with former Bucks head coach Jason Kidd only added to the many slights the 23-year-old has dealt with in his young NBA career, which Parker personally denied was the case upon Kidd’s firing in late January of this year.
Everything came to a head down the stretch and into the playoffs last season when Parker aired out his frustrations regarding his uncertain future and the lack of significant playing opportunities he was given by interim head coach Joe Prunty upon his second return from injury.
Distilling Parker’s departure from Milwaukee to those three bullet points may lack additional context, admittedly, but it only drives home the point regarding the disconnect that increasingly stood at the forefront between the Bucks and Parker at the end of his tenure.
All of that isn’t to say Parker didn’t experience high points as a Buck as well. The biggest example of this was during the 2016-17 season when Parker fully displayed his gifted scoring prowess throughout the first half of that season by averaging 20.1 points on shooting splits of .490/.365/.743 in 51 appearances.
Of course, Parker’s second ACL injury robbed him from finishing out that year and can very well be looked at as the turning point that set everything in motion to where we stand as he now heads back home to his hometown of Chicago.
Given how complex of a situation it became over time, though, there simply isn’t one factor that can be painted as the sole reason why the partnership between Parker and the Bucks ended up fraying, leading to his exit.
Ultimately, it’s very easy to see Parker as a victim of circumstance, due to the injury red flags that now follow him throughout his career and how he became increasingly lost in the shuffle in terms of the foundation the Bucks have been trying to cultivate over the last few seasons.
Even as he returned back to action with his high level athleticism and explosion intact at the start of the 2015-16 season and midway through last year’s campaign, layers were inevitably peeled back exposing Parker’s defensive deficiencies and overall flaws that became too much to overlook.
In the end, what remained was the sentimentality associated with Parker and the great character he possesses off the court, one that has made an impact throughout the city of Milwaukee, which will be a loss now that he’s moving back down I-94.
Moving on from a player who declared upon getting drafted that he wanted to stick with one team throughout his career stings to those who have continued to stand in his corner and have shared their outcry over the move to part ways with him.
That doesn’t make the decision any less difficult, but revisiting that sentiment Parker expressed over four years ago only goes to show how wayward this journey had become the longer it wore on.
Next: Win in 6 Podcast #235: Farewell, Jabari Parker
Whether this split will eventually give way to what both the Bucks and Parker are looking to achieve is the question on everyone’s mind, but there’s no doubt the two will be intrinsically linked in the years to come, in terms of what ultimately could have been.