Sacramento Kings forward Jabari Parker was spotted playing tennis in a Chicago-area park on Saturday. This comes just days after Parker announced he’d tested positive for COVID-19, and at a time when Parker was supposed to be in quarantine. Parker was also playing without a mask.
TMZ was the first to report about Parker.
Jabari Parker Out Playing Tennis Mask-less After COVID Announcement https://t.co/9AVLfAlx04
— TMZ (@TMZ) June 27, 2020
The Sacramento Bee’s Jason Anderson reports that the Sacramento Kings are now investigating the incident.
The Kings tell The Sacramento Bee they are looking into reports Jabari Parker was caught on camera playing tennis without a mask in a Chicago-area park just three days after revealing he had tested positive for COVID-19, possibly breaking NBA protocol.https://t.co/c5gS7IanL0
— Jason Anderson (@JandersonSacBee) June 28, 2020
Upon testing positive, NBA protocols require a player to quarantine and refrain from physical activity for 14 days. While tennis itself is naturally a sport that’s socially distanced, the fact that Parker would be out and disregarding protocols is not a good look.
Personally I don’t care that much if he played tennis in a private location, but being out in public without a mask when you know you’re carrying an infectious disease is completely irresponsible.
This is obviously all new territory for the Kings and the NBA, so it will be interesting to see how the situation is handled.
This is the most troubling part of the article…
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I never liked the guy as a pleyer, and if this it true, now he’s not giving a shit and putting other people at risk. Cut him.
I’d be cool with this, and I wonder if the NBA would have the Kings back if they somehow argued against paying him the rest of this year’s salary. His PO for next year is another story.
Not a very good player, not a very conscientious person. Good luck next year in Shanghai, Mr. Parker. I think the sun just set on your American basketball career.
In his defense
wait, he doesn’t have one.
Barring an unimaginable good reason, cut him. The last thing a challenged franchise needs is a guy who just doesn’t give a fuck!
The only issue with cutting him is that you have to pay & be cap accountable for his $6.5m next year. You could always waive/stretch him, & I think there has been talk of an amnesty provision, in which the team still pays the contract but there is no cap hit. In the end the Kings may waive/stretch/amnesty Parker to make more room for Bogi’s next contract.
The Kings, like every other NBA team, have lost a shit-ton of money due to COVID. How they handle Parker and his rather pedestrian contract may shed light on how tight things are right now in Kingsland.
Are morals clauses still included in contracts?
Because I can think of few actions more immoral, selfish, and overwhelmingly stupid than what he did if he’s still infectious.
I don’t want a guy who does something like this on my team, whether they’re end of bench or a max level superstar.
I don’t think this would pass the sniff test in court as it pertains to morals clause.
Dude, we had players with DV issues, cussing out gay refs, threatening journalists, being Matt Barnes and recently a coach with a sexual harassment suit.
Morals don’t mean much to this FO.
-Kings FO
Character probably is a fluid thing to this FO, but the perception/PR that would be gained or lost from something like this what they will take into account. If it means more $ will be lost from something like this, then they’ll deal with it. Not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they don’t want to be loosing more $ or dealing with negative news stories.
Why?
I mean, I just gave a list of examples where cuddling the players/coach meant more to them than perception/PR.
The main difference here is that Parker is an end of the bench player who does not get minutes.
If it would be someone like Bogi, Hield or Fox blatantly ignoring Covid-19 measures after being tested positive, (almost) no-one here would suggest cutting him. So we also have to examine our own views / hypocrisy here.
I would.
I agree, we’ve had some very questionable and bad influences on the team. But I think the current social climate, with the Kings taking a much more active involvement to social issues that something like this will be taken more seriously than even a year ago. We can debate whether this is a good or bad way to handle things but it wouldn’t surprise me to see him cut based on what they think it will cost the team in money instead of morality.
right. Money Matters to them. not Character. Character is only selected as it relates to Money.
Good points Rob. My thoughts at the time of posting is that the cap/salary issue is separate of the distancing needed from this guy. Maybe as you said team double V can find a way to stretch him. I am incensed at the idea of a guy caring so little being a part of this thing going forward. If that is what VV allow, and thereby are about, then I need to get more enthusiastic about soccer, or a 3 hour drive to sit with tech nerds coaching Curry from the 99th row.
And fire the guy that traded for him!
Unrelated, but my favorite comp for Bagley is a better rebounding Jabari Parker, when healthy.
The when healthy part applies to both players
Parker is a better NBA player, he skill-set and ball handling is much better than Bagley…while Bagley may be a better offensive rebounding player…
Oh yeah, I did not mean exact same skillset.
I was thinking more in general; Duke forwards with a me first attitude and ballhogging tendencies, big stats at mediocre efficiency and little defensive accumen/impact.
Empty stats guys.
That is how I always say Syracuse guys. Coleman, Siekly, Owens, Anthony. I hadn’t seen the Duke thing. Maybe it is the guys they draft those are 2 hall of fame coaches for sure.
Oh, in general I view Dukies as underachievers and limited on defense.
Take away top guys like Grant Hill, Elton Brand and Shane Battier, you get the guys like Langdon, William Avery, Laettner, Danny Ferry, Jahlil Okafor, Jabari Parker and Corey Magette.
My fear is Bagley will fit into that Okafor/Parker/Magette slot; nice stats, but at what costs to the team?
What a POS
Screw him. Seriously.
This isn’t basketball anymore, it’s life and death.
This is disappointing, but not surprising. He has plenty of talent and some interesting skills to have had a more productive career so far, but has never seemed to really engage mentally to make himself better. He is still a low effort defender, hasn’t expanded his offensive game, and doesnt seem to bother much with physical conditioning. If someone is so lax about putting in the work to capitalize on his chance of making tens of millions of dollars, its not a surprise to see him so lax in other important aspects of his life. It is hard to imagine that the tennis court was the only place he went. If this is true, I hope his disregard for other people ends his career in the NBA.
I’ll just say one thing as it pertains to his career, not defending anything he’s done recently especially this, but I’m now starting to believe his potential dipped exponentially due to tearing his ACL twice in the same knee. Hasn’t been the same since.
Jabari dropped the ball on this. Ugh.
I want to make clear this is simply constructive criticism. I love this site, the writers, and the community, and understand there’s always extenuating circumstances.
Now that that’s out of the way, I think if there’s an article about The Ringer’s twitter poll and an article about Parker playing tennis, then there probably should also be an article about the Kings reported schedule once/if the season resumes. I don’t think the writers are ignoring actual news to focus on clickbait. It just appears that way, so I figured I’d mention it.
As someone who gets to peek behind the curtain, I can tell you that (a) an article on the schedule is in the works, and (b) it is a deeper dive than the Ringer or Parker quick hitters. It takes a little more time to cull through the schedule’s ups & downs.
I didn’t know TKH headquarters was referenced in a movie…
This movie, too:
Yeah, that fits better.
I figured that was the case. I just felt weird about the idea of posting “OT: what record do you think the Kings need to have to make the play-in?” under an article about how Jabari was potentially endangering people’s lives by playing tennis whilst infected with a deadly disease.
Also, I’m morbidly chuckling at the thought of telling 2019 RORDOG that 6 months from now you will post a comment on “The Kings Herald” about how you’d like to discuss the 8 game Disney World schedule on a separate thread from the TMZ article about how Kings forward Jabari Parker got caught playing tennis after testing positive for a pandemic-level virus.
Like WTF? We deal with this stuff in the moment, but once you step back and just look at how the world has changed so much so fast it’s pretty mindblowing.
Full transparency, part of it was also the timing of when they released the schedule. Myself and several others were busy this weekend. I wrote this article during a quick moment of downtime, but I did it on my phone and wasn’t even at my own house. For a news piece like this that wasn’t a big deal. Doing a piece on schedules is harder to do on the phone.
All that said, y’all know I’m all about them clickz baby
For some reason this jogged my memory about the time someone wrote a fanpost about catching a certain former Kings 6th man allegedly cheating on his wife at the bar.
It’s almost surprising to me that there aren’t more clickbait-type rumors about Kings players/coaches/execs. Overall, we’re pretty good about keeping out of grown folks business.
1.Cut him now and approach the NBA about voiding the rest of this year’s contract. Aruge he shouldn’t be payed for the remaining 8+ games.
2.He’s likely to opt in next season, so stretch him and hope for and league wide amnesty of stretched players due to coronavirus.
3.Put his name in the Kings basement with the likes of Spencer Hawes, Jason Terry, brothers Maloof.
I think if there were ever a time to potentially cut him and void his contract this would be it. This is so dumb and selfish on so many levels and could potentially endanger thousands of people. He needs to be gone immediately.
Parker’s decision making, from his weight issues to not respecting COVID-19 guidelines, say a lot about how much he cares about his playing career. Which is to say it doesn’t appear as though he really cares at all about his playing career.
Can’t say I’ll feel bad about his upcoming suspension or him being cut from the team, he really doesn’t seem like he’s got any dog left in him and obviously isn’t much for mentoring considering what a bad example he’s setting. Oh well…
I don’t wanna rush to Jabari’s defense. I think his decision is about as a-social and irresponsible as one can behave inside of a pandemic. I’m also no fan of his play – I agree with most every criticism. But something is troubling me about the personal condemnation of him. It seems to lose sight of his decision in a wider context. a context where is he is 24 year-old, bored and missing normalcy. A context where the national and local responses to Covid 19 have been confused, patchy, and over-flowing with misinformation. A context where he may not (not sure on this) have even been symptomatic. Like I said, I don’t wanna get him off the hook. What he’s done is serious and warrants proportional consequences. I’m just trying to hold these two things together, namely Jabari’s reckless decision and the context in which that decision was made.
Badge Legend