Celtics sign Jabari Parker
- Thread starter Cellar-Door
- Start date
Guess Brad wasn't so patient with him.
The actual quote was: "We're looking mostly at him as a guy who can play some four for us," Stevens said. "But also, maybe some small-ball five in some lineups, especially around some of our better players, as a ball-mover, as a passer, as a playmaker, as a driver, as a guy who can put the ball in the basket and is a real threat to put the ball in the basket."
Smart said after the game that Parker didn't really know the system. After all the $ Evan Turner made when Brad rejuvenated his career, I hope DA put a clause in JP's contract that Brad gets a cut if Brad can rejuvenate his career too.
Maybe to Brad playing him only 16 min was his way of being patient if his plan is for him to be mid to high-20’s per game as he’s been his entire career?
I mentioned to look for his use to be similar to Carmelo in Portland and he goes 25mpg on average. The minutes are available for him. Grant and Semi combined for 45 min tonight and even with Jaylen there are extra minutes available for Jabari. He has the ability and is far more talented than those two so the rest is up to him.
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Yup, there are definitely 15 minutes available most nights for a competent wing on this roster.
Obviously Jaylen and Fournier will take most of the Grant/Semi minutes from tonight, but there is no reason Jabari can't be next man up as a 9th man.
I think he's probably going to be more in the 15-16 range. He got run tonight because 3 of the top 7 were out, and he looked good when he got out there. Those 45 are going to be eaten up by Jaylen and Fournier (who'll also eat up some of PP's minutes).
I think Patient isn't meant to be about just minutes, but more that they don't expect him to consistently play well, or know what he's doing yet (and yes when he's playing bad he'll probably have a quicker hook). I think for example, if he weren't being patient Brad probably yanks him earleir in his 2nd stint for the D. Smart talked about it some... he really doesn't know the sets on offense or the defense yet... normally you screw those up and Brad has a short leash (see... Wagner, Nesmith, etc.)
I expect he'll get Kanter minutes.. 15-17 MPG in the regular season with some ups and downs... under 10 MPG in the playoffs, and maybe almost none in some games if a series is a bad matchup.
Well, I feel fine. It’s only 1 game of course, but JP provided exactly what the team needed - another go to option somewhere on the roster. We have several players simulating hot potato out there, so a player who knows what to do with the ball - and the ability to pull it off - begins to round off this squad. He’s a vet bringing a different spice to the recipe. Thanks for staying, CBS.
Yes... but here's the thing. There's a handful of players that Stevens can put on the floor, but many of them are in the heat check category for where they are in their careers. Is Semi hitting 3s tonight? Is Grant feeling it? Is Romeo going to get lost on D? Is TL going to get in foul trouble in this matchup? Is TT clanging it (though he's been much steadier lately)? JP might be one guy that can be more of a known quantity (solid offense, suspect D) where Stevens can be comfortable that he's going to get X when he puts him in. For a coach, a consistent skill set is valuable - because he can scheme around a weakness. Given some practice time (a big ask), he'll quickly figure out which pairings he can use JP with and optimize from there. Given Stevens quote above he intends to play him with the starters some. This could be a real good pickup for the Cs, sneaky good.
I vaguely remember that some of Parker's early career struggles relate to him playing out of position at the 3, where he wasn't enough of a shooter, and that he got better as he got to the 4. I'm not surprised the Celtics aren't making that mistake.
Last night, outside of 1 minute with Kornet to start the second quarter, all of his minutes came with Grant Williams as the other big. He was never on the floor with Thompson or Ojeleye, but did get at least some time with all of the other Celtics who played (Tatum, Walker, Smart, Pritchard, Langford).
The other notable thing is that, down the stretch last night, Brad went with Grant (in place of Ojeleye) and the starters (Thompson, Tatum, Smart, Walker). But late in the game, with Celtics down 1, he went to Parker for Thompson right before a key possession. Then, at a Warriors timeout, he went back to Thompson for defense.
That makes me thing @Cellar-Door is right about situational use. Parker will play mostly in smallball lineups and be involved in late game offense/defense substitutions.
Will he fit alongside Rob the way he did alongside Grant? He probably needs to in order to find consistent minutes when Rob is back.
It also helps that GSW doesn't really have any bigger guys who can score. GSW received 85% of their points from 4 guys - Steph, Bazemore, Poole, and Wiggins - so JP's lack of defense wouldn't be that much of a problem.
Yep. Last night was tailor made for him. Whether he can produce in less favorable circumstances is still an open question.
Slowly but surely CD is coming around on Parker it seems. Only took 15 minutes of playing time juxtaposed with the typical Semi/Grant/Romeo stench.
Again, this is more about Brad and Danny realizing there is clear role for a mediocre NBA 3/4 on this roster right now. Parker does not have to be good to get playing time, he just has to be not terrible. The fact that he is only 26 and actually has a tiny chance to be better than mediocre is just a small bonus.
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Grant played 24 minutes to Jabari's 16. He's also been noticeably better on D the past couple weeks, in contrast to his ATROCIOUS first half of the season.
I do, however, agree that Jabari is a far superior pointz producer.
In addition to being better at scoring POINTZ, Jabari also has a better career rebound rate, assist rate, steal rate, and turnover rate than Grant. It is very hard to describe how atrocious Grant is on offense.
He has a 17.5% turnover rate and usage is 11.4%. He never touches the ball or tries to do anything, but when he does he turns it over. It's an incredible combination. Bismack Biyombo territory.
Grant has short arms and is not athletic so his D has ceiling, but I'm glad it's improved since the beginning of the year. His offensive package mixed with poor defense was particularly gruesome to watch.
Interesting how the Celtics veterans reacted to Parker in his first game, with Thompson running over the him on the bench to dap him up as Kemba took the clinching FTs.
They understand how important it is to have veteran presence off the bench when deep in the playoffs, where one or two plays make the difference between advancing and going home. I just cringed thinking about the big shot Jeff Green hit late in game 7 in Boston to help the Cavs to the Finals three seasons ago.
If Parker can give this team 4-6 good minutes each half in the playoffs, it’s going to help.
They understand how important it is to have veteran presence off the bench when deep in the playoffs, where one or two plays make the difference between advancing and going home. I just cringed thinking about the big shot Jeff Green hit late in game 7 in Boston to help the Cavs to the Finals three seasons ago.
If Parker can give this team 4-6 good minutes each half in the playoffs, it’s going to help.
Am I wrong to suggest you might have used “Yes... and here’s the thing...”? Agree on all this and consistency is exactly why you need bench vets. Different skill sets and knowing approximately that player’s production gives CBS flexibility and multiple options. All season CBS was throwing wild cards onto the court and it was unfair. Now it’s incumbent upon him to put the vets in position to succeed.
It almost seems unfathomable that Parker just turned 26 years old. His body and the way he moves make him look like he is 35 years old
I thought the same, he looks particularly creaky out there for someone who is only 26. Lot of miles on the tread, people with multiple ACL surgeries almost invariably have pretty significant arthritis so I'm sure he does too. Probably a close call between him and Kemba for least amount of cartilage on the roster.
Still has some offensive instincts and skill at least.
I'm super glad Parker played and contributed to the win (notwithstanding his first minute) but he's not a 3 and isn't getting 3 minutes.
He's certainly an upgrade from Wagner so I'll take whatever we get from him playing the 4 and small ball 5.
edit: a JT / JB / Marcus / NG / Parker lineup could score a ton of points and would be a ton of fun against certain opponents.
Radsoxfan will probably end up being right on his minutes prediction for Parker but he'll be right for the wrong reasons. Parker is a better fit/has a less redundant skill set than Semi, Grant and to a lesser extent RL. The latter 3 are more defensive orientated while Parker is actually looking to score. Grant, Semi and (again, to a lesser extent) Langford will be competing with each other for minutes. Parker will be competing with no one.
Parker has something the C's could use. The whole "just play 2 of Tatum/Brown/Kemba" thing is fine but sometimes it's nice to have another offensive threat on the court. For all his flaws, Parker can POINTZ on a team that could use POINTZ.
Scorers are a lot like starting pitchers. You really can't have enough, at least if everyone buys in. I can't see Jabari putting up a stink about not getting the ball on certain nights.
Agree w this. The problem is that Fournier will come back, and at that point pointz are covered.
You can never have too many scorers who can shoot, but you absolutely can have too many "scorers" if they need the ball to score, and if they are hurting your defense.
The Cs playoff rotation will be:
Tatum
Jaylen
Kemba
Smart
TL
Fournier
TT
PP/Jabari/Grant/Semi/Romeo in some combo that totals ~15 mins/game, and could be 0 in a highly competitive game.
It's pretty hard to ever want Jabari minutes at that point unless you're playing a team with a small center and you want to really spread them out and get him in the post after a switch or something.
Yeah, he's not breaking the top 7. After that, it's all match ups. Playoff minutes aren't regular season minutes though. It's not hard to see Parker playing 20 minutes a night the rest of the regular season with rest/injuries and what not. Next year, I could easily see him getting Semi's role.
They have plenty of players who are ok on defense but hurt the offense. They don't have so many who are ok on offense but hurt the defense. There's 10 bench spots, they should have a one dimensional offensive player they are comfortable using in non junk time. They have Edwards but he never plays.
I think there will be more than 15 minutes for the guys outside the top 7. I think they will have a top 8 (with Pritchard joining the 7 you listed because he's the only point and Kemba won't be going 38+ minutes every night). After that it will be mix and match with the others, and Parker maybe has a small edge there as the obvious guy to go to when the right kind of offense is needed. (On the more defensive situations he doesn't get anywhere near the court).
Parker might also get certain late game situations where Brad wants to do offense/defense substitutions.
In an ideal world he might not get much in the way of playoff minutes, but rarely are things ideal. Injuries will inevitably open up some minutes and my guess is that Parker will be a better option than Grant or Semi. Certainly gives Brad more options.
To be clear, it’s not about POINTZ, it’s about COMPETENCE. Grant’s inability to score is impressive and easy to post about, but it’s the entire offensive package that’s embarrassing.
Semi, Grant, Romeo and Nesmith have been shockingly bad on offense. There’s no way to sugar coat it. No other team in the league has 4 guys that have at some point gotten regular rotation minutes perform so poorly. Average D and horrific offense does not a rotation player make.
If Jabari can provide typical mediocre minutes from a fringe NBA rotation player, he’s going to get them.
I read somewhere about Parker having played the 3 earlier in his career which isn’t really accurate. He shared the frontcourt with Giannis early in his career and they were fairly interchangeable at the 3/4 but that is far different than being asked to play a pure 3 where you are often times matched up with 2’s in a three-guard lineup. That never happened with Jabari.
Sure, but this just makes him a different, dull tool in Brads tool box. I mean, it is very hard to describe how atrocious Jabari is on defense.
If you're looking for a fifth guy to put on the court with Pritchard, Smart, Jaylen and TT, you probably pick Jabari for the offense.
If you're looking for a fifth guy to put on the court with Kemba, Jaylen, Tatum, and Rob Williams, you probably pick Grant(or Semi) for the defense.
They're both very limited, nearly polar opposite, dudes.
Yeah, I think people mistake me saying JP was pretty good last night, and that he may get Kanter usage with saying he's:
1. Good
2. Significantly better than the other bench players.
He's not. He was good last night in part because we badly needed scoring and he went 5/6 from the field. He goes 2/6 and he'd have killed us. He can't defend, luckily last night he spent a lot of time matched up on players with no offense (GS is a pretty bad team outside of Steph on that end).
There will probably be games that Parker plays, but there will be games Grant plays, or Semi, or Romeo.... they all are players with a limited area of competence, and significant flaws. I think we need look no further than last season to see the situation where Grant plays over Parker... Parker is Kanter, Grant is Grant. If he gets on a decent hot streak from 3 and plays decent D, he'll get run over Jabari, because that would be more valuable to us than midrange points with bad D.
1. Good
2. Significantly better than the other bench players.
He's not. He was good last night in part because we badly needed scoring and he went 5/6 from the field. He goes 2/6 and he'd have killed us. He can't defend, luckily last night he spent a lot of time matched up on players with no offense (GS is a pretty bad team outside of Steph on that end).
There will probably be games that Parker plays, but there will be games Grant plays, or Semi, or Romeo.... they all are players with a limited area of competence, and significant flaws. I think we need look no further than last season to see the situation where Grant plays over Parker... Parker is Kanter, Grant is Grant. If he gets on a decent hot streak from 3 and plays decent D, he'll get run over Jabari, because that would be more valuable to us than midrange points with bad D.
Generally I agree with that, but it's important to be clear on the degrees of suck here. I'm not saying Jabari is good or even average on D. But as a 4 I think he can be below average but competent enough, say a 3 out of 10 to put a number on it. Maybe he can be average on offense, give him a 5.
On the flip side, the offense from the Grant, Romeo, Nesmith, and Semi is otherworldly bad. A 1 out of 10. Not NBA caliber, as bad as it gets. As a total package in a neutral environment, I think Jabari probably has an edge over these guys.
Are there times when you prefer a 5 defender and a 1 offensive guy over a 5 offensive guy and a 3 defender? Sure. But generally speaking you take the better overall player in your rotation.
I definitely am not a Jabari far for what it's worth, but I do acknowledge there is a significant hole on the roster for someone with NBA skills on offense. The bar is very low to fill the 9-10 man role on this team right now, he's got a shot.
I think Jabari is as bad on defense as the other dudes are on offense.
I like the signing, but he is what he is.
He's just a different sour grape.
Fair enough, I haven't watched him enough to form strong opinion at all. I didn't do a deep dive up but a cursory look showed him to be bad on D but not otherworldly bad.
It would be very tough to be as bad on defense as those guy are on offense, but perhaps he is.
One thing to remember too.... you can be pretty bad on offense and not damage the team offense too much (especially if you can hit 36%+ on open 3s) bad defenders hurt the team's defense a lot more. So on O, you can stick a guy in a corner and it's not going to break the offense too badly, especially if he can somewhat punish being left WIDE open. A really bad defender limits what defenses you can run, and can sometimes just completely break an otherwise good D.
Parker may have a role because we have a bench that unless we're healthy, leads to multiple really bad offensive players on the court at once, so maybe we deal with 1 really poor defender, to limit how many poor players we have on the other end. But when fully healthy, we can usually get 4 good offensive players on the court almost all the time... in that case a defender probably has more value.
I hear that, though I would assume to some degree that's sort of baked into the defense stats.
If he's bad, teams will attack him, and his defensive ratings will probably reflect how bad the team performs with him out there.
SOmewhat. I think DEF metrics get fuzzy because of context (how do we grade the individuals on some of those Hawks units for example, where you have 2-3 terrible defenders), but also there is something that doesn't show up in the metrics, and that is scheme.
So like KG, he was one of the all-time greats defensively because he was great at drop, he was great at ICE, he was great on switches... you could play anything with him and he'd be great.
Take a guy like Jokic then... he's been pretty average at D recently, and one reason is that they just stopped playing drop, they never drop, ever, because he's abysmal at it, so they built out the rest of the D around having him play at the level.
The worst defenders... and I think Jabari is probably in this group... are the ones who you put in the system that they are best at.... and it's still bad. Those are the guys who if they're hot on offense you live with it for 10-15 minutes, if they aren't they go back to the bench.
I wonder if one technique they try is some zone when he's in there. Just park him in a space and reduce how much he has to move and his decision tree
The thing about Jabari is that you are miscategorizing him as a shooter who can be “hot or cold” when he’s simply a natural scorer who has been consistent in this area even throughout his flawed career. Take last year in a somewhat limited role in Atlanta.....his first 29 games before they phased him out he scored in double figures in 26 of those games averaging 15 ppg. When Jabari plays he’s going to score points for you an extremely high percentage of the time based on the high percentage type of shots he generates.
You can pretty much count on an 0-7 tomorrow night now I’m sure lol.
Yeah, very often these ACL tears are accompanied by meniscus tears and cartilage defects. The tibia shifts anteriorly, snaps the ACL thats supposed to be holding it in place, and bangs against the femur. You get a very characteristic pattern of bone bruises +/- cartilage defects along with often meniscus tears.
Are there times an ACL tear is present but the rest of the joint looks "clean" aside from a couple minor bone bruises? Sure. But this is the minority of the time in my experience. Add in the fact that he has had a re-tear, even more likely he has some meniscus and cartilage damage going on.
I've said this before, but almost all of these guys have some issues with their knees and hips, so it's all a matter of degree. But chances are Jabari's knee probably looks worse than the standard 26 year old NBA player, even disregarding the ACL.
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If Parker can give us even 75% of that production over the rest of the season, and Fournier can contribute at the level we expect, i will be very very happy.
I'm an advocate of the NBA ZONE in small doses with specific players/rotations utilizing it. It's good at hiding long players that are not the most mobile.
IMO someone like Parker (7' wingspan) on the backline of the 2-3 would camouflage some of his defensive warts for 4-5 mins/half. The guys at the top of the zone are the real engines at making it work since they cover the most space, can get in passing lanes and easily turn TOs into 2pts (see Jimmy Butler/Derrick Jones for Miami last season).
So if you wanted Parker and Fournier on the floor at the same time, I'd play Tatum and Smart at the top and TL in the middle. Don't hold your breath, Brad reluctantly uses the zone with random units
So, from his first couple of years there are a lot of Milwaukee lineups with a center, Giannis, and Parker on the floor together. But I agree that isn't the same as Parker plahing a pure 3.
As advertised. Knows how to put the ball in the basket even without sets designed for him. Good garbage scorer. Lost defensively with new teammates.
He's way better than Moe Wagner.
The toss up between Grant, Semi, and Jabari is still a toss-up. They all give you different things, and they all have huge inadequacies.
The toss up between Grant, Semi, and Jabari is still a toss-up. They all give you different things, and they all have huge inadequacies.