Jabari Parker Rumors

You’ve been in the limelight since you were in high school. You’ve always seemed pretty mature for your age. Were you always that way, or did you have to grow up quickly because you were in the public eye at such a young age? Jabari Parker: I had to grow up really fast because, when I was younger, a lot of attention was thrown at me at a very fast pace. My mom always emphasized who I was and the importance of representing everybody – and whoever associated themselves with me – in a great light. I just wanted to make them proud. That was a time when I really wanted to put on for the community that I’m from. At the time, Chicago was dealing with a lot of violence and bad things in the news. I just wanted to show that not everyone from Chicago was like that. It’s definitely something I’ve worked on since I was a kid. I do admit that I’ve made mistakes and I’m not trying to be perfect, but I’m so grateful for those experiences and what I’ve been able to learn from them.

That’s a lot of pressure to deal with, especially at a young age. You were, what, 15 years old when those mixtapes came out and everyone started talking about you? You were one of the first phenoms to come up in the mixtape era or the social-media era. How did you deal with that immense pressure? Jabari Parker: I was about 16 years old. It was in 2011, I think, when YouTube and all of those basketball networks really took off. It was good for the culture and it was good for basketball when all of that came about. I never put so much pressure on myself. People can judge you, but His judgment – the man upstairs – is the only judgment that matters. When I have that type of outlook, everything else takes care of itself. I know that I make the right decisions. And maybe I will make some wrong decisions too, but, at the end of the day, we’re all the same. We’re all human. There’s just not as much pressure when I have that type of outlook.