Should Grizzlies’ Parsons start?
His time so far has been a list of injuries
Two seasons. Seventy games. Forty-two starts. Almost $46 million. The numbers for Chandler Parsons are nothing short of catastrophic. Although warnings about his knee issues were manifold, the Grizzlies went ahead and threw caution to the wind in a foolhardy attempt to add star power to the team. Parsons signed a four-year, $94 million maximum contract in the wild and crazy summer of 2016, and as it turns out, while many major contracts signed that summer have turned out to be ill-advised (Joakim Noah, Bismack Biyombo, Evan Turner, Luol Deng, just to name a few), Parsons' might be the worst of the bunch.
His time in Memphis has been a blur of injuries, re-injuries, minutes restrictions, rehab sessions, and, yes, occasional bursts of reasonably good play. Parsons was nowhere near healthy his first season, and his alarming numbers reflected that. Here was a player who had averaged almost 47 percent shooting putting up a 34 percent mark from the field – when he played. More often than not, he didn't.
It would have been better for all involved – team, player and fans alike – had Parsons simply been shut down for the entire 2016-17 campaign. His contract and his stature meant that was never much of an option. Instead, he did what he could with what he had, physically.
Former coach David Fizdale felt obligated to start Parsons when he played, wanting to build chemistry with the first unit (and to appease a front office looking desperately for a return on investment). It didn't work. Nothing worked.