Smush Parker

(NOTE: This scouting report was written when Parker was 25 years old)

Strengths:

Smush Parker is an explosive scoring guard who has the ability to shoot the basketball, slash to the basket, and wreak havoc in the passing lanes when playing at the top of his game.

Parker is an explosive scoring guard and his best asset separating him from many other PGs in his vertical. He led all point guards in dunks this season, more than double his nearest competitor, Baron Davis. Early in the season he dunked over many big men such as Vitaly Potapenko, Rasho Nesterovic and a few others. In half-court sets, his blow-by speed and solid first step aid him in getting to the basket and when the angles are accurate or when there is an opening, he can certainly dunk. He also shines in transition game where he is capable of throwing down many of his notable tomahawk jams. Parker is a viable option to lob to whether in half-court sets or in transition.

Parker's offensive game is not only limited to slashes and dunks, as he can also shoot the basketball at a solid clip. In the Lakers' triangle offense he is primarily a spot-up shooter but he has shown touch and the ability to get open solidly at times, and as a result ended the season shooting a solid 45% from the field and 37% from threes. Parker primarily showed most of his touch early in the season, shooting 48% from the field and around 40% from threes at times. In terms of offense, nearly half of his shots come from three point land, which was his job as he and the rest of his teammates needed to space the floor for Kobe Bryant. Allt hings considered, he did a good job in spreading the court.

Another strength of Parker's resides in his physical tools. Parker is long (his wingspan is around 6'10") and along with his good anticipation skills, he uses that to his advantage to accumulate a number of steals each game. He is among the top 20 in every category in steals in the NBA, and he takes advantage of poor passing or careless ballhandling by the opposition. Parker's height (6'4") is good for the prototypical NBA PG and would obviously aid him in defense as well. Parker has a long and lanky frame, and weight doesn't seem to be a concern despite being on the skinny side (although he may need more strength). Parker also possesses NBA speed which shows both offensively and defensively, and the latter combined with his other physical tools lead many to believe that he can eventually become a good defensive player.

Parker was known as a streetballer with many fancy moves and playground-like playmaking skills in the past, but he has vastly toned down his game and attempted to fit it into Phil Jackson's triangle offense. Although Parker has been dubbed as a "turnover waiting to happen" and was seen as turnover prone before joining the Lakers, Parker only averaged 1.79 turnovers this year and rarely made unforced errors. Parker played under control and generally was patient waiting for his turn to handle the ball or shoot, and as the triangle PG he definitely did not overhandle the ball excessively. Parker has good ballhandling skills, carried over from his playground days, and he utilized that in the triangle. Parker was decent passing the ball within the offense as well.

Parker is extremely young and essentially got "thrown into the fire" as the starter for the Lakers after Gary Payton and company left. All things considered, he did fairly well and definitely made a name for himself, considering that he was in Europe last year and had been an NBA journeyman before that.

Weaknesses:

Parker's weaknesses reside primarily with his assertiveness and his general mentality. As a result of that, he's had quite an up-and-down first season with the Lakers and ultimately collapsed in the playoffs.

Parker has a tendency to become streaky not only from game to game, but from minute to minute. Throughout most of the season Parker tended to score points in bunches, mostly in the 1st quarter, and then he became invisible throughout the rest of the game. He is an extremely streaky scorer who can follow 24 points in one game with 5 the next. Although he's put up double digits many of the games he's played, his scoring is rather inconsistent because he puts them up all at once and not over the course of the game most of the time. Parker needs to become more assertive and perhaps even demand the ball to become a more reliable scorer.

To boot, Parker tends to get down on himself if things are not going his way. When his shot abandons him or gets streaky, his game seems to get exponentially worse and often Kobe Bryant had to console him on that. This may definitely be a product of his youth, he puts high expectations on himself and sometimes does not see them come to fruition.

Parker's offensive game is not extremely reliable. He has a good jumpshot, but it can get streaky at times. Parker has a higher chance of missing his jumpshots when a hand is in his face, or even a man is on him. Parker doesn't always make the best decision offensively, and may settle for an ill-advised jumpshot from time to time.

A part of Parker's offensive woes reside in his lack of creating off the dribble. Throughout the season Parker rarely, if he even did, create a shot off the dribble. One would think that with his ballhandling skills, that could be easy to do, but this part of Parker's game still seems raw and unpolished and he hasn't shown much in terms of attacking defenders, getting by multiple defenders, or even shooting over them when need be. Parker hasn't shown much in terms of gaining separation from his man or getting him off-balance, using his ballhandling skills. A part of this may be due to his restrictiveness within the Triangle, but it seems like he definitely has the ability to utilize it. All in all, Parker's ballhandling is fairly original in the league and he can be a bit predictable at times because he is not one to use jab-steps or head-fakes to lose his man.

Parker also seems to lack a great mid-range game, and has not taken much of them in his first Lakers season. He has shown some ability at times, but tends to defer to three pointers as for method for jumpshooting. Parker's can attack the basket, but he does not do a good job of handling defenses at times, and can be prone to missing layups or making mistakes trying to get around them. Sometimes Parker may do too much in getting to traffic and be prone to losing the ball or his handle leading to turnovers (although that didn't happen too much).

Parker needs to improve his free throw shooting (69.4%) surprising despite his good mechanics, although he was once in the low 60s in free throw percentage so he has improved a bit over the course of the season.

Parker was an creative playmaker back at college and his streetball days, but the Triangle offense has vastly toned his game down and now he's among the lowest among starting NBA PGs in assists per game. Parker doesn't get to handle the ball much, as that job is Kobe Bryant's, but he still seems to lack the polish and the playmaking skills that pure PGs have. Parker is not a pure PG in that sense, because his decision-making skills seem to below average when he is trying to force the issue or get passes his way, which may be in part why he tried to mask himself within the Triangle to make calculated passes. His inability to effectively draw defenders and make plays for others individually may also hamper his passing ability. Parker has shown in the past that when he plays his style of game, he tends to get a lot of turnovers along with assists, a reason why the Lakers may have wanted to tone his style down.

One of Parker's greatest woes with the Lakers is defensively. Despite accumulating a lot of steals through his long arms and his gambling, Parker is a horrible defender both man-to-man and off-the-ball. He seems to lacks the basic instincts defensively, and despite having the tools to stop his man, he often lets his man blow by him or gives him an open shot. Parker has been torched by many PGs, even lesser PGs, and part of this has to be his rawness and his lack of defensive discipline. Like his offensive game, Parker tends to disappear defensively and hasn't shown much improvement all season, and it eventually caused the Lakers' downfall in the playoffs when Steve Nash had his way against them. Off-the-ball, Parker is often late on rotations and has many defensive lapses leading to open drives or open jumpshots. He can be prone to gambling for steals as well. Parker seems to be putting effort at times, but his desire and intensity to get his defensive task fulfilled remains to be seen. His defense may get better over time (as he's still young) as he certainly has the capabilities of guarding his man efficiently.

Although Parker proved a lot of his talent in his first year (even toning his game down in the process), his minutes exposed a lot of his weaknesses and the raw aspects of his game, and he can definitely improve on them. Being young (25 years old) and with a lot of time left, he certainly can do so.