It’s official. The hometown Chicago native, Jabari Parker, has landed with the Bulls. The former 2nd overall pick from Duke in 2014 will sign a two-year, $40 million deal with the Bulls. Milwaukee declined to match the high annual value offer after they basically hard-capped themselves signing Ersan Ilyasova earlier this offseason. The Bucks could have matched an offer for around $17 million but $20 million per year proved to be too costly. Parker gives the Bulls a high upside player to potentially build around.
Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN was the first to report the deal:
Free agent forward Jabari Parker has agreed to a two-year, $40M deal with the Chicago Bulls, league sources tell ESPN. Milwaukee rescinded Parker's qualifying offer moments ago, making him unrestricted.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 14, 2018
Parker, 23, comes to Chicago with big red flags regarding his injury history. Parker missed lengthy portions of two seasons with significant ACL injuries. However, when Parker is at his best, he can be a prolific scoring threat. In 2016, Parker averaged over 20 points per game shooting 49 percent from the floor. With Parker still being a young buck, the hope is that he can get through the injury concerns and live up to the hype.
Parker’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, gave his thoughts on the Bucks organization:
“From the moment the Bucks drafted Jabari with the No. 2 pick in the 2014 Draft, they have gone out of their way to treat Jabari as a member of the Bucks family, and this is another perfect example of doing exactly that, and we’re very appreciative.” – Mark Bartelstein
It’s going to be interesting to see if the Bucks made the right call here. I’m not sure signing Ilyasova made a whole lot of sense if Parker comes back healthy. For Chicago, they could have serious defensive woes considering that Parker has never been known as a defensive wizard by any means.
