Well, the season is officially here (even though the Bucks don’t start until tomorrow night), and with it comes the news that the Bucks and Jabari Parker have failed to come to an agreement on a contract extension. This means Parker will be a restricted free agent next season, so the Bucks can match any offer made to him by any other team. In other words, the Bucks and Parker are by no means done yet.
Let’s say he does leave after next year, though: how does this affect the Bucks?
Well, last season was a pretty interesting one for the young Bucks. While their premiere player (Giannis) stayed healthy, one of their best three players was injured just about all season, with Khris Middleton coming back the very game that Jabari Parker went down for the season. After that game, the Bucks stood at 22-29, with their playoff hopes looking grim.
Once Middleton came back, though, the team experienced a renaissance of sorts, winning 20 of the next 31 games and locking up a very solid sixth playoff seed. Now, Parker didn’t play in every single game before he got injured, and Middleton didn’t play in every single game after he came back from his injury, but it’s worth examining this nonetheless. At face value, it seemed that the Bucks were a fringe team with Giannis & Jabari, and a bona fide playoff team with Giannis & Middleton.
Let’s examine this a little bit further, by seeing the on/off statistics for each player. Again, Middleton played about half the minutes that Parker did, so this is not perfect by any means, but he did play enough to give us a solid sample size. If the image is too small to see clearly, you can click on it to blow it up.
Now, as you can see, it’s not exactly clear-cut either way at first glance. Parker was more important to the team’s rebounding and blocking, but Middleton was more important for the team’s steals and ball security. Importantly, Middleton was also much more of a positive influence on both the Bucks’ offensive ratings and their opponents’ offensive ratings than Parker was. At the end of the day, it’s safe to say that Khris Middleton was more important to Milwaukee’s success than Parker was, at least when it came to their and their opponents’ offensive ratings.
In other words, last season Khris Middleton was probably a bigger factor on the court for the Bucks than Jabari Parker was. Does this mean Parker is a bad player? Absolutely not, and since Middleton is a great player himself it’s nothing to be ashamed of to come second to him. On top of that, whether or not he ends up re-signing with the Bucks I truly hope this last ACL injury is his final major injury, and that he gets to enjoy the long, successful career that he was projected for when the Bucks drafted him number two overall.
That said, the Bucks should not feel like Parker is their clear-cut second-best player after Giannis, since Middleton may be more important to their future success. For the team, that means they should try to retain Parker but not necessarily break the bank to do so (unless he has a monster half-season after the all-star break, which he absolutely could). For the fans, it means that they can enjoy this season worry-free without stressing about Parker’s contract situation all year.
Anyways, all of this is a long ways away, since we have a full 82-game schedule to deal with first, starting with tomorrow night’s opener in Boston.