Jabari Parker is frustrated with playing time, but there’s a reason he’s not playing much

Jabari Parker has had a rough go of it as the Milwaukee Bucks have fallen in a hole against the Boston Celtics.

The Milwaukee Bucks lost the first two games of their first-round playoff series against the short-handed Boston Celtics despite Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton going off in both games. The Bucks’ stars haven’t gotten much help offensively, while the team’s defense has struggled to get stops.

Eric Bledsoe has drawn plenty of ire for getting outplayed by Terry Rozier and then making silly comments about it, but there’s another high-profile Buck who has been a disappointment: Jabari Parker.

The former No. 2 overall pick returned from another torn ACL in early February, appearing in 31 games and playing 24 minutes per contest. However, he only played 25 minutes total in Games 1 and 2. Needless to say, Parker is frustrated with the lack of playing time, even taking a little jab at Bucks interim head coach Joe Prunty on Thursday:

It’s understandable for Parker to be frustrated, but the reason he hasn’t seen the court much is he hasn’t been any good. In those 25 minutes of action, Parker scored only two points on 1-of-7 shooting as the Bucks got outscored by a whopping 29 points.

Parker has never been a defensive savant (that’s putting it kindly), but he can make up for it by scoring in bunches. When he’s not scoring well, though, he becomes a liability. He’s not much of a playmaker and teams target his defense.

That’s what has happened against Boston. Parker hasn’t been involved offensively, with just one dunk to his name to go along with some bricked contested jumpers and a couple of Al Horford rejections back in his face. Milwaukee has scored just 69.1 points per 100 possessions with Parker on the court in this series, per NBA.com.

Meanwhile, the Celtics are taking advantage of his defensive shortcomings. Watch Jaylen Brown roast Parker off the dribble in Game 1:

And this effort in Game 2 on a Horford coast-to-coast layup simply doesn’t cut it:

Parker’s minus-53.3 net rating shockingly isn’t worst on the team, but it’s just a tick better than Tyler Zeller’s minus-53.4 net rating.

Sadly, the Bucks struggling with Parker on the court isn’t new. Milwaukee was outscored by 3.5 points per 100 possessions in Parker’s 743 regular-season minutes, and the 2015-16 season is the only year in which the team was better with him on the court compared to on the bench. And in that season, the difference was marginal.

Next: LeBron James reminds us he's still the best player on the planet

These playoff struggles come at an especially inopportune time for Parker. He’s set to become a restricted free agent this summer, so a good playoff run could have earned him extra dollars. But his value is dwindling with these postseason duds, which could also represent his final games with Milwaukee:

Signs point to Parker being elsewhere next season, but for now, he can help himself and the Bucks by putting forth a better effort the rest of this series.