Fresh off a season-ending loss on Sunday, Jabari Parker went through a by-now-familiar postgame routine.
He cleaned up, decompressed with teammates and then met with reporters. He answered questions about how the game — and entire season — had gone.
But then, Parker did something he doesn’t normally do in a moment that’s featured in a now-viral video clip.
He started crying. He broke down to the point that he couldn’t get words out.
Who is Jabari Parker?
Parker should be familiar to BYU fans. He was once one of the school’s — and nation’s — most sought-after high school recruits.
Ahead of his recruiting visit to Provo, fans printed thousands of T-shirts in his honor, as ESPN reported in 2012. They wanted to make a good impression on the young basketball star, who had grown up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Despite the shirts, Parker ended up picking Duke, where he played for one year before declaring for the NBA draft.
In June 2014, he was selected second overall by the Milwaukee Bucks, and got off to a hot start with them that fall.
But in December 2014, Parker suffered the first in a series of devastating injuries. He tore his ACL and missed the second half of the 2014-15 season and then, two years later, tore the same ACL again, per NBA.com.
Ahead of the 2018-19 NBA season, Parker signed with the Chicago Bulls, beginning a period of bouncing around the league. He still had moments of greatness, but failed to turn into the consistent star he had been expected to be.
Parker ended up spending the 2022-23 season away from professional basketball, then moved to Spain last summer to begin an international basketball career with FC Barcelona, according to The Sporting News.
Jabari Parker video
Parker, now 29, had a pretty successful season with the Spanish team.
Barcelona had “a 25-14 record in the Spanish ACB League and a 24-15 record in EuroLeague play,” The Sporting News reported. Sunday’s loss came in the semifinal round of the ACB playoffs.
After the game, Parker described his first season overseas as a “beautiful experience.”
“I made a lot of friends,” he said, per The Sporting News.
But when Parker was asked to say more about being away from home, he broke down in tears. The video cuts off after several seconds of him crying.
As the footage began making the rounds on social media Sunday night, basketball fans in the United States expressed concern. Several noted that they wished his NBA career had worked out.
On Monday, Parker clarified that his tears were happy ones. He said that playing in Spain had helped him regain confidence and fall back in love with basketball, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.